Ruse
by Kpasa
Summary: A whirlwind: not of leaves that grasp the sand and whirl it with them, on a prairie; but of paper and cigarette butts, on a sidewalk. Samantha Carter comes undone. S/J.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: **A whirlwind: not of leaves that grasp the sand and whirl it with them, on a prairie; but, of, paper and cigarette butts, on a sidewalk. (Charlotte Liberty Walker, I Heard A Scream In The Street, 1970). Samantha Carter comes undone. S/J..  
**Season/spoilers:** Probably sometime after season 5. Spoilers for Lost City, Metamorphosis, Ascension, Death Knell, Zero Hour and Heroes.  
**Category:** Dark, mentally deranged angst, and of course to contradict that there may be some sickening fluff and babyfic.  
**Disclaimer: **None of this is mine. Really. The schoolyard rhyme comes from the book 'Surfacing', by Margaret Atwood, and there are quotes from the book (I Heard A Scream In The Street).  
**Rating: **Teen, at least. Lotta swearing, some sex, some violence. There should be a game for how many times I dropped the F bomb.  
**A/N: **hopeisabluebird is the single most AWESOME person in the world right now for being willing to beta this.

* * *

_I try to listen to  
The still, small voice within  
But I can't hear it  
Above the din_

- Little Audrey's Story by Eliza Ward

**Ruse**

**

* * *

**

She wakes up and there is a man in her room. Watching her. She shoots upwards, momentarily stunned as she realizes her gun is in the other room. As a scream builds up in her throat, the man melts into the floor, leaving a long, drawn out shadow in front of the bookcase. She goes in the bathroom with shaking hands, staring at her reflection in the mirror wondering what the hell just happened.

The fluorescent lights above her dim imperceptibly as infinitesimal shadows clank to the bottom of the light bulbs, breeding and seeping along the glassy particles until there is total darkness. She sinks to the floor, wrapping her arms around her legs as she tries to figure out if the darkness is coming from the bulbs or from the recesses of her mind.

It didn't start then, she knows.

* * *

"Major, are you alright?"

She gives the General a broad smile, eyes flashing bright. Absently forgetting the four hours between then and now. 'Yes Sir, of course I am.'

Tries to shake it off.

She feels it again, later, as she walks through the parking lot of the gated compound of Cheyenne Mountain. She feels eyes, thousands of them, peering and leering out from the crisscross chains of the security fence, flittering away when she looks for them.

She knows something is _very_ wrong when she can't remember the Gate coordinates of their most recent off-world expedition. All she remembers about the planet are the parallel lines of endless hieroglyphics, her impatience with Daniel and the throbbing desire for a cold swim.

She remembers feeling glad to leave the dry heat of the desert planet. Glad for the shower waiting for her and the cool September breeze.

But something followed her off of it.

Into the wormhole, out of the gate and off into the sunset.

* * *

She knows it's expanding into an incalculable growth the moment it makes contact to Earth's atmosphere. Igniting inside of her, mutating her cells and molding itself into each molecule in her body, replicating by the trillions.

General Hammond asks her for her report, but she can't write about something she can't even remember. For an hour she stares at the off-world artifacts that Daniel had excavated, desperately trying to place them. She takes a deep breath in, casually visiting each team member and picking up enough evidence to frantically piece the puzzles together. No doubt the worst report she's ever handed in.

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." Uncle Leo quoted to her when she was 11, trying to calm her down before her class presentation on Shakespeare.

If Hammond confronts her, she settles on doing the one thing she swore she would never do.

Blame it on cramps.

Only one day back and she feels her morals slipping.

* * *

She watches the Colonel, Daniel and Teal'c, scrutinizing every single motion they make. She wonders if they see the same, cruel things as she does. If they hear the same clicking ticking noises from the ventilation to the flash of lights in the corners of their eyes. The pounding sensation in their heads as though they ran a mile. The same black tentacles that merge into large particles and slither across their vision.

But her teammates laugh and joke as usual, and she feels more alone than she ever has.

She goes home scared. Unwilling to admit it, but scared nonetheless.

* * *

From one artificial world to another.

* * *

It's windy outside. The trees outside groan from the strain and scratches the windows in futile pleas. She looks down at her hand, watching curiously as the pink skin undulates in wavy formations, like moving through water, but there is no water. She sits at the kitchen table, spinning the lazy Susan, _wobble wobble wobble. _She clams her hands over her ears, shutting out the sound.

* * *

Her stomach contracts and the bile rushes up into her throat. She vomits in the bushes. After haggardly dry-retching for ten minutes, she looks up to see the condemning face of her neighbor, the old one with the limp, glaring down at her from the yellow and green tint of the window. She greets her scowl with a scowl, momentarily glad that the Shadow is speaking for her.

What does the bitch know anyhow?

* * *

She knows she has to try to ignore the creatures that slither out of the walls, the laughs creaking out from the wood grain.

And in the night the man stands, waiting for her.

The shadows flicker in the corner of her eye. When she glances over, they disappear. She shakes her head and moves on, knowing in the back of her mind it will happen again.

A predictable lunacy.

* * *

She calls her niece on a Sunday morning, brightly wishing her a Happy Birthday when she hears the clicking. It's quick, clipped, but she hears it, loud like a jet engine, and stares in shock at the mouthpiece.

"Aunt Sam? Aunt Sam are you..."

She hangs up the phone, ripping the cord from the plaster wall.

* * *

When she was a child, her father was stationed at Fort Pickett in Virginia. There she made her first non-army-brat friend, a bad-mouthed girl named Kate. At 10, the girl was pack-full of supposedly wise wisdom, her most important lesson being that to successfully scare off a bad guy, one could A) beat the shit outta them, B) act mentally delusional and freak 'em out, or if all else fails, C) punch 'em in the balls. (This, of course, was important to differentiate from Lesson A).

She wishes Kate had a solution for this particular enemy.

* * *

She hopes it will pass, that the creatures will tire of her. But deep inside she knows she would rather have them trapped inside of her mind than be set loose on Earth.

She thinks she should tell someone, Janet perhaps, but the at end of their fourth day back the shadow appears in the corner of her left eye. It obstructs her vision and manipulates her with soft, seductive whispers. It tells her Janet will tell Hammond she's crazy, they'll lock her up and throw away the key. They didn't believe her when Orlin visited; they aren't likely to start believing her now. She keeps silent.

* * *

She calls him the shadow man, as she knows when night descends he slips out from her head and stands in front of her bookcase, arms crossed as he watches over her.

Warning her.

* * *

She finds herself running most days, usually in the late afternoon, something she ceased to do years ago. The sound of her feet slapping the pavement and the mountain wind on her forehead is somehow numbing, and she thinks if she just pushes her body that extra bit harder, makes her lungs and legs ache with the pressure until exhaustion consumes her, then maybe the dreams and the shadows will leave her be that night.

* * *

She doesn't quite understand the clicking and ticking and the absence of time, even if it is for just a split-second.

She'll be walking down the street, climbing up a rock face or merely picking up groceries. It can happen anywhere.

The world slips, stumbles, disappears in an empty black hole before spitting reality back into her face. Time is flexible, this she knows, almost like a fluctuating entity.

A glitch in the universe.

Pause. Click. She is outside her body. Click. Nothing's changed but her perception.

She looks around, trying to figure out what has shifted. The world's off-kilter and she's the only one that knows it.

She thinks the glitches are like little pause buttons on a remote control, lapses in time that force her to rewind and recollect. A section of her life momentarily spliced and tossed.

Pause. Resume. Pause. Repeat.

* * *

The next morning she's almost proud of her acting skills. Donning all the appropriate smiles, returning the routine quips. The shadow blows kisses of light into her eyes, brightening the false sincerity.

The Colonel visits her in her lab, as per usual. He plays with a yo-yo as she stares intently into a microscope, pretending she knows what she's looking at. The shadow tells her to smile, and laugh dutifully at his lame jokes and wait patiently for him to leave. The laugh lines in his face eagerly respond to her carefully timed quip. But inside she feels the urge to scream, to grab him by the lapels on his BDU's and beg him to get it out of her. When he finally walks away with a two-fingered wave and the familiar warmth in his dark eyes she knows the shadow has manipulated even him.

It's Jolinar all over again.

* * *

She lets the shower run, hissing with heat as the steam rises and swathes every corner of the cramped bathroom. Sweat breaks out on her flushed skin, and her hair falls limp. She stares at her reflection, her body pale and wasted in contrast to the stark brightness of the towel.

_Bloody Mary Bloody Mary..._

She watches, frozen, as the shadow man rises from the steam, emerging from the holes in the showerhead and billowing into a vapor mist. She holds her breath as he slowly snakes his way forward, the black particles undulating and folding within himself as he cloaks his arms around her, tonguing the skin of her neck.

The blackness overtakes her as she falls to the ground.

* * *

Won't.

Shut.

Up.

* * *

There are books on the lawn. She sips her coffee mug, staring at the window and tries to think back when it was that she threw out all her novels. Later she gathers them up, most of them bloated and rippled with water damage from the morning rainstorm. She sits down on the damp, un-raked grass and picks up one of the books. With a fingernail she scratches at a word. Bits of ink scrape off onto her fingertip. She puts her finger in her mouth and tastes something sharp and bitter.

"Carter."

She looks up, her finger drawn from her lips and blinks in surprise. She glances around, furiously. Curiously. But no one's there.

* * *

Voices wash over her. Whispers. Condemning her. A large part of her doesn't mind; she needs the company.

* * *

They're talking about her in the commissary, their teasing voices sliding through her like Goa'uld pain stick. She hears the words "So Hammond asked me to double-space my reports", and she translates that into "That Carter is one psychotic bitch." To think she risked her life over and over for these bastards.

They're all watching her, waiting for her to slip up so they can pat her on the head and send her packing back to the Pentagon, like a good little girl.

Well she'll show them.

She knows a hundred different ways to blow Cheyenne Mountain a thousand clicks into the air.

The rational side of her brain cautions her, freezes her. She needs to go home.

She's afraid to go home.

But she's more afraid of what she'll do if she stays.

* * *

The darkness ebbs and pulses beneath her skull. Her back arches from mattress. The keening of his voiceless cries tears into her ears like a speaker box; simmering from a treble cleft before ascending into a metallic cacophony that rises so high it disappears altogether.

* * *

Nonsensical schoolyard rhymes drill into her head ceaselessly. There was a rhyme for everything, back then. Smallpox... dead presidents... that one kid with the leg brace. If they could think it they would sing it.

_Stick him in the bread pan,  
Sock him in the jaw;  
Now he's in the graveyard,  
Haw, haw haw._

She wonders if there's a clever enough rhyme to capture the mockery of her own life.

* * *

She scours the house for evidence of security feeds left over from Orlin's visit, and though unable to find anything, she unscrews the light bulbs and smashes them in the kitchen. Releasing the invisible bugs. Hammering away their invisible ears and invisible mouths. Invisible Spies.

The old bitch across the street is spying on her too, she knows it. She draws the blinds, sinking further into the shadow.

She showers every day, relentlessly scrubbing her skin entirely aware that the water is the only thing that will cleanse her of the airborne toxins.

It's in the daytime when the darkness overtakes her. When nighttime falls, the intricate delicacies of the world come alive for her to taste. The noises and bumps in the night keep her awake, and fear grips her heart into an iron fist.

She can't live like this.

* * *

Whirlwinds don't abate. They just hide, until it's time.

* * *

The next evening after work she packs a duffel bag and drives to the outskirts of the city, as far as she can reasonably drive from her house. Escaping the spies in her home. She rents a motel room, a sparse square of space that smells of stale sex. It's paid usually by the hour but the man behind the desk doesn't say a word when she tosses him $500. The building itself is a sleazy, boxy edifice, surrounded by a few pawnshops and porn franchises. The sidewalks are cracked and jagged, miniaturized tectonic earthquakes pushing and rising and freeing long dead tree roots. Hung fatally below gloomy mountains and a brooding sky. Cornered by empty unsellable lots consumed by weeds and used syringes. She likes it here.

Maybe it's because here she feels like the normal one.

Cockroaches clumsily race across her toes in the night, the couple next door nearly breaks down the wall amidst rhythmic climatic banging and she wonders if she should go back to her mundane room in her mundane house, back to the shadow man. But the lights from the red neon sign outside the grimy window wash over her, illuminating the room, and she feels inexplicably safer.

* * *

**SJSJSJSJSJS**

**

* * *

**

Weeks go by.

_Weeks._

The conscious side of her mind laments the loss of her friends, as the realization dawns on her that the shadows will never leave. Her team will never notice the infinitesimal changes in her, or by the time they do they'll be acclimatized to this new Samantha Carter.

She has no breadcrumbs for them to follow.

The only thing she understands is that her life is falling apart. And she's the only one that notices it.

* * *

She discerns, her natural curiosity brightening, that she has never attempted to speak to the shadow man.

But, as she plops down on the sinking mattress, she knows that this is because his words will reveal her cowardice.

* * *

She sees her mother at the farmers market, dodging between vendor stalls with her blonde silver hair glinting in between.

She follows the trail, trying to capture the bobbing of the faraway figure, before losing sight of her altogether.

Didyou seeher.?..? Didja? Where? Did you fucking understand that? You know what "where" means?

Fuck fuck fuck not going to lose her again fuck fuck fuck.

She finally catches up to the woman, only to recoil in horror as she turns around, a black hole yawning in place of a face.

* * *

She's sitting at on a bench near the freeway, the bright orange paint appealing to her with its peeling luxury. The sun is bright in her eyes, and she is thankful the white glare that filters through her eyelashes block out the shadows. Bus drivers shoot her dirty looks as they wait impatiently before moving on. The warm breeze plays with the soft hairs on her arm, and she watches as a pigeon doggedly scoffs down cigarette butts and garbage. Behind its gasoline-coated feathers a cluster of daisies peek out from cracked concrete.

She knows that there is beauty in the ugly.

But she can't seem to find the beauty within herself.

* * *

One rainy morning she wakes up with a dim memory of being in an underground cave, senses consumed by dying red embers and the stark smell of coal and grease. She vaguely recalls listening alternatively from the heavy clanks of loud machinery to the heavy heartbeat pounding below her ear. _Jonah._

She's terrified that she is unable to remember else about that dream or the man starring in it, even more so as she recognizes, deep down to her soul, that this is important to her.

But what's even scarier is the realization that her feelings for this faceless, mysterious Jonah, strikes an even bigger chord inside of her than the presence of the Colonel.

She knows then, at that moment, that she has lost herself to the shadow man.

* * *

There's another side effect to this lunacy, she notes with a touch of grimness. Every moment of every day she is consumed by this insatiable, unquenchable need to get laid. The ache permeates through her very core, massaging her brain in pulsating pain. But even crazy Samantha knows better than to sleep with some random person, or risk court-marshal by jumping the bones of ones commanding officer. So it's not without some hint of pleasure that she bumps into an old Mathematics professor at the supermarket, shopping carts banging and identical grins forming. He is a flaxen-haired man not much older than the Colonel, and whom she once intensely desired from the confines of the third row auditorium. Half an hour later, honest intentions of a coffee date tossed aside, she fucks him in the backseat of his Honda Civic in the parking lot outside of a Starbucks.

She leaves humiliated and overwhelmingly satisfied.

* * *

She is so fucking sick of cockroaches.

* * *

She's walking down the grey corridor with Daniel when all of a sudden the shadow man appears yet again in the corner of her eye. Teasing her, shooting out a limb into her vision merely to distract her. She stumbles forward, catching Daniel off guard. Her head buzzes in pain, and she clutches at her head. He asks her, in that annoyingly concerned voice of his, whether or not she'd like to go to the infirmary.

"No!"

He's startled. She bites her tongue.

"No." She repeats softly, calmly. "I'm fine Daniel."

She can control this.

* * *

She's forgotten her birthday, not surprisingly, and she laments to think that by this time next year she'll be six feet under with a distinct black-charred hole in her skull.

She doesn't think she can last much longer.

At the end of the day the Colonel surprises her with a book on 'current trends in relativistic astrophysics', topped off with a card portraying a half-assed doodle of Bart Simpson, a bubble above him saying "Happy Birthday Man!" As she imagines him standing and fidgeting in line at Barnes and Noble, embarrassingly handing the book over to the cashier, some bullet of warmth penetrates the black steel of whatever remains of her soul.

She wants him.

An hour later she lies spread-eagled on the red sheets, her short hair elongated by sweat and wreathed around her face like a burning halo. Blood simmering in red desire, the tongue disappears and her legs close, arms outstretched. She feels her forehead pinch with the sting of thorns, and this surprises her. She never believed in god, but now at this moment she feels like one. With her long tanned legs and black heels and a whimpering mathematics professor completely under her control, she feels more powerful than she ever has before. She rolls her head upright, eyelids heavy with lust, and she wishes for an entirely different man to crawl over her and tuck his head into her neck.

* * *

The professor leaves with a grin and a glint of pathetic affection in his eyes, and she knows, with an unhappy sigh, she'll be seeing him again.

Even more sickening is the realization that she is beginning to sympathize with the Goa'uld Hathor, and her endless quest for domination. Stirred on by an increasingly familiar sensation of lust and power.

She wonders, as the tables turn, if she was too quick to condemn.

* * *

Despite her brief fling with power, she still sleeps with a gun under her pillow.

* * *

For a while she thinks she can control the shadow, somehow live with it like a symbiote. But when the simplest mental reflexes begin to fail her, the shadow clamps down on her panic attack and sedates her, and she knows she is gone from this plane of existence.

* * *

Monday morning Dr. Lee asks her to double-check what to her should be a simple theorem, and she realizes that for two hours she's stared at the sheet of paper without a hint of comprehension. She can't make out the numbers. They rise out of the page and drift laughingly, taunting. She wonders if this is how other people view the complex nature of her doctorate. She realizes, with a sharp breath, that she has officially lost whatever basis of her necessity to Stargate command. The numbers in front of her cease to remain in there constructed frames, and she laughs with the futility of it all. Grieves the loss of her prized talents that she so often associated her identity with. Vaguely worried about her ability to keep up with the big boys.

But, thanks to good ol' Uncle Leo and W.C. Fields, she is damn good at baffling with bullshit.

* * *

It's easy to see herself from a mirrored perspective, to recognize the traits that belong to her and that belong to the shadow man. It's easy to present herself as a version of tamed sanity, to pretend to do her job accordingly, despite the impossibilities.

But that is that shadow man talking. Samantha Carter is terrified at the gradual loss of her mental faculties, yet vaguely comforted in their inevitable outcome. She realizes that maybe she finally has the desperately needed breadcrumbs. Rule number two, Kate said, about defeating an enemy. 'Show 'em your crazy side.' Her insanity will finally lead SG1 to her prison, and to her ultimate salvation.

But that doesn't stop the shadows from bleeding onto the walls.

* * *

It's Team Night at the Olive Garden, and she tries desperately to dredge up the enthusiasm needed to get through the night. Teal'c saw one too many commercials for the restaurant, and for the night his appetite knows no limits. She spends the night with her head leaning against a fist vigorously trying to focus on Daniel's lecture all the while pointedly ignoring the Colonel flirt with the waitress. She knows he doesn't do it intentionally, he never makes the first move, but he never stops it.

She's sick of being the only one who's attempted to make her feelings clear.

She declines his offer of a ride home, wondering if he'd rather pick up the giggling waitress who left her number on the receipt.

It's only ever been about him.

* * *

It pains her to think that one day, if humanity succeeds in offing themselves by total nuclear annihilation, cockroaches could one day inherit the earth. Little bastards could probably survive a replicator invasion.

* * *

At the briefing one morning she can feel his eyes burning into her neck, staring at the raw hickeys. From the angle she sits at, she knows he's the only one who can see them, despite her pains to cover them up earlier. But she can't hide anything from the Colonel. She realizes, as her eyelids shudder to a close, that she doesn't care. Bitterly thinking of Edora, she realizes this is her revenge. For once, she wants him to know it.

That other men want her. That other men can tear into her skin with vicious teeth, cry her name out with an animalistic pain, all with a single clench of her thighs. That she can disarm any man into complete subservience. She reaches across the table to grab the coffee mug, feeling his eyes follow into the open dip of her shirt as the marks trail down to her collarbone.

She never wanted to be a slut.

But the shadow simply begs for more.

* * *

She goes to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Flicks on the buzzing switch, mirrors grimy with age. Not her bathroom. Anyone's bathroom. Cut off here from her world. Hotel room is transit state. Not a building, not a hotel, because really all it is a fuck-room, a bedroom. Anyone's bedroom. The only difference being the one sleeping in the bed. Just her. Transition. The couple next door scream their enthusiasm, the gushing repetition of their names, "Oh, --! Oh,--!) But in the end it's just her. She closes her eyes and imagines the Colonel, imagines her crying out his name under the taut cords of his arms. But his name is something faraway and unattainable; his name represents something like sacrilege. Not the bible kind. Literally the end of the world kind.

There are muffled bumps and clunking from below, ceaseless susurrus of the heating vents. Two distinct sounds. There is a pure flow of airstream, and a lower, more rattle-like undercurrent growl; a muttering voice.

She freezes under the starchy sheets as the voice emerges from the dark depths and slithers into her ear, lowly laughing in the darkness of the room.

"_You can't have him..."_ He teases.

She's surprised that the shadow man exactly like the Colonel.

She knows this will be a very, very long night.

* * *

It takes her a full 10 minutes before noting Teal'c standing broodingly at the door, arms crossed. She' stunned at her own lack of reflex, and before she can say anything his words have already crossed the length of the room.

"I hope you overcome this, Major Carter. Whatever it is you inflict upon yourself."

She wants to reply, to tell him about the shadow man and the voices and her losing her very identity and how she thinks something followed her off that lonely desert planet and taken over her body. But by the time she opens her mouth he has already left.

He was always, secretly, her favorite.

Daniel is her brother, the Colonel is something more, but Teal'c will always be her redeemer.

* * *

It isn't until the next mission to PX3-whatever that she finally succeeds in revealing the first intimations of her agony.

She should take note of this. Jungles and monsoons act as fantastic instigators.

She and the Colonel scour the far edge of the perimeter, the drenched hoods hangs over their heads as the torrential rain pummels into them.

The dripping is ceaseless. It swims through the creases of the dark green Gore-Tex material and drips into her eyes, suspended by eyelashes and blinding the shadow man. As the Colonel gripes about his dislike for trees, she clutches her P-90 closer to her chest as her face flinches with each pendulous drip... drip..._drip._..

She's beginning to understand the effectiveness of the Chinese water torture concept.

It isn't until she's further into the bright green cacophony of the jungle, stepping blindly across purple vines and swerving past giant yellow leaves that she begins to truly feel it.

Suffocation.

The jungle heat is an odd contrast to the stinging cold outside, and the purple vines makes her think of blue veins, only suffused with more life than she could ever imagine.

It's probably from the steam that emanates through the soil, or merely the blinding humidity of the forest. But she blames it on the flak jacket. It's far too small. Compressing her, choking her. She adjusts and readjusts until the Colonel finally snaps at her, telling her to _pay attention, _and she just _knows_ he's biting back a PMS retort. She honest to god hates him some days.

It's only later, after running like hell from a fleet of Jaffa that she realizes the danger that she put them in. The shadow man tries to block her fear, assuage her guilt, but he can't hide the fact that she is completely inept in the field.

Her hands had shaken the entire time.

Amazingly enough, the Colonel didn't even notice. It's only later she understands that he too, is distracted.

* * *

Every few days her CO asks what she's up to that evening, and she realizes he's fishing for information. Wanting to know who it was that marked her neck. This time she stares in barely disguised wonder as he leans against the door, trying so adorably hard to act cool and casual and she feels a long forgotten rush of warmth slide through her. It's killed pretty fast when she remembers whose bed she's going to be in later that night.

And anyway, she can see the reflection of the shadow man in the Colonel's black eyes.

She smiles secretively and swivels around on her stool, opting to attempt to concentrate on her work. He drums his fingers on the doorframe in a gesture of futile defeat before moving on.

* * *

It sickens her to see the amount of trust that Stargate Command has placed in her. Each airman and each scientist that passes through those corridors look at her with an absolutely, unshakeable blind faith in her abilities. And in her sanity.

She has to wonder who's more fucked up.

* * *

She stuffs her passport and $500 dollars of extra cash in her locker, just in case.

* * *

She understands most people hate cockroaches. She does. But on Monday morning when she wakes up to a monkey chain of them dangling above her eye from the headboard, she knows it's more than personal. She vows she'll one day annihilate them all.

* * *

Daniel gets food poisoning, unsurprisingly, and it's with some measure of relief when she's given a week of downtime. The next day is so temptingly sunny she takes the Indian motorcycle and drives north into Wyoming, spurring the vehicle faster and faster, as far as she can get. When the shadow man juts an elbow in her vision, she merely clicks into the next lane.

The acreages she drives past stretch out into infinite, parallel lines, and she thinks it's appropriate that she races across the only vertical concrete column in a sea of horizontal land dividers. Hoodoos tower in the distance and the long stretch of road ahead of her just aches for burnt rubber. And she's more than willing to assist.

The sun descends and a deer skitters across the road, startling her and forcing her to lose control. The accident's not too bad, but she left her cell phone at home and has to wait an hour for a passing car. When she limps into the locker room one week later, no one can contain their shock she tells them about the minor incident. Introducing the not-so-invincible Sam Carter. About time they met her.

That's when the questions start.

The looks.

The concerned raised eyebrows.

The barely alive part of her screams out _yes!_ But the shadow man stomps on that as fast as she thinks it.

* * *

Teal'c is the only one that comes out and says it. Sometimes she thinks he's a better friend than Daniel and Janet combined. She can't get a good read off the Colonel. She knows he's aware that something's off, but he always shut himself from her.

* * *

She watches tiredly as white orbs flit across her vision, playing tag. Playing some lunatic game of Marco Polo in her head.

She thought she was long past paranoia. The past few weeks the shadow man had granted her a welcome reprieve, an opportunity to breathe despite the constant buzzing in her head. The fear had abated. But as she lies in bed, grimly listening to the heavy moaning on the other side of the plaster wall, she thinks she hears footsteps, and she knows the reprieve is over. She hears faint scuffling outside the doorway, though she sees no shadow filtered under the crack. She presses her head lightly on the pillow as her hand snakes underneath and grips the cold flesh of the gun. Sliding the safety off.

Just in case.

* * *

She doesn't notice when she misses her period.

* * *

General Hammond asks her why it is that the strange climate of planet PX7-983 affects the tectonic activities near and around the Stargate, and she opens up her mouth to spit out her routine answer only to realize she has no answer to give.

They stare at her from the table, speechless, and she sees exactly when it is that they all wake up to finally catching on to the breadcrumbs and _finally_ taking a good look at her.

About goddamn time.

* * *

She sighs as she drives down the road going opposite from Cheyenne Mountain, rolling her eyes in the rearview mirror. She thinks that if the Colonel truly intended to be inconspicuous about trailing her, he wouldn't have picked his behemoth of a truck. But she doubts he cares about pretensions such as that. She wonders if he's at all surprised when she drives past the turn to her house, and continues on for another 45 minutes before arriving to the seedy motel. She climbs up the rickety, iron-fenced stairs and turns the key into number 26, turning on the light before leaning against the doorjamb. With a hand playing with her keys and her ankles crossed, she waits and watches as he parks the truck, warily glancing up at her before climbing up the stairs.

Fumigation. That's the reasoning she gives.

Roaches infested her house, she says, as he looks cautiously around the sparse room. Prudently taking in all the pathetic details. The giant, _fuck-me_ bed, the tiny satellite TV with the crack in the screen, the graffiti on the walls, the claw marks on the headboard, the broken, sadly swaying door of the mini-fridge.

"Why did you follow me?" She asks dutifully with a perfect hint of hurt, fully knowing why.

He stares at her, his face carefully guarded, and she knows he's scrutinizing her as though she's a Goa'uld trickster.

"I dunno", he slides a hand through his rumpled hair, "you seem distracted lately. And tired. We're worried, Carter."

"Are we." A pointed statement rather than a question. She hates how he will never admit, za'tarc detectors aside, to his own personal worry.

She would like to tell him how she's afraid to sleep. How the only thing more terrifying than the shadow is the darkness behind her eyelids when she lies in bed.

Instead she dons him a dazzling smile, meant to reassure. "I'm fine sir, I'm sorry I gave you the impression I was otherwise. The whole thing with my house being fumigated is just really stressful right now."

She attempts to act nonchalant at his skeptical glance.

The shadow man buzzes excitedly in her mind. _Opportunity. _She suddenly thinks it would be really nice for them to fuck on that lumpy mattress under that thin blanket. His shoulder blades flexing as he pounds into her, payback for the people sleeping in the next room. Rivulets of sweat rolling down his chest. But he isn't looking at her with anything remotely akin to desire, and she leaves it alone. She's nervous as he copies down the number on the sticker taped to the phone, and her paranoia begins to creep back in.

As he steps out the door he brushes past her, his face agonizingly close to hers, his leather jacket shooting static sparks into her. The sky turns to yellow dusk, and long shadows formed from flickering signposts and crisscross fences stretch across the cracked abandoned compound. He stares distastefully from the iron-gated balcony, before turning to her, his face shadowed.

"Stay safe, Carter."

She makes some unremarkable reply and the next thing she knows he is gone. She shuts the door with its peeling faded paint and bolts it, hearing the buzzing grow louder and louder as the creatures find their way to her.

Nowhere is safe.

* * *

She knows something is about to give when all of SG1's upcoming off-world missions are cleared away. She stares at the blank schedule with a surprising sense of calm, sipping her coffee and eventually walking away from the curious eyes.

She knows of only two inevitable outcomes that can come of this.

The shadow man winning, or the shadow man losing.

Either way she knows she won't be able to survive it.

* * *

She looks at her cell phone, only to see 11 missed calls from Janet. All filled with a forced cheerfulness, suggesting girl's night out or reminding her about her next physical. By the third plaintive message she snaps her phone shut and tosses it to the homeless man sleeping by the garbage bins.

* * *

She has sex with the professor one last time and seconds before he falls into unconsciousness he sleepily mumbles his love for her. She freezes, and when his breathing evens out she stealthily slips out of bed and hurriedly dresses. She crawls out the window and it's only until she's run all the way to the motel that she realizes she's forgotten her shoes. She gingerly walks over dead, crunchy leaves to the empty motel pool, a black shape, a welcoming void in the dark night. She dangles her bloody feet over the abyss. Knowing that somewhere down there with the leaves and the fast food cups and the used syringes that her soul is somewhere amongst the empty muck. _'Holy Hannah,'_ she thinks, _'that doesn't even make sense.'_ The shadow man sure doesn't give a fuck. She watches in fascination as the grimy dirt on the periwinkle-tiled wall intermingles with her bright red blood, streaking across skin surprisingly white in the darkness of the night.

The dead wind carries the voices with it, suddenly breathing with life in the empty compound.

When she finally goes inside to room 26 she stands for an indeterminable amount of time in the bathroom, staring at her reflection under the harsh yellow lamp. She fingers her hair, measuring the length via her knuckles. Her blond hair has reached below her ears, and Lord knows she didn't want to be kicked out of the Air Force because of a dress code violation. She takes scissors and hacks off as much as she can, leaving the blonde remnants scattered in the cracked sink.

* * *

The phone is ringing.

She winces at the noise, it's distracting her. She needs concentration.

She's lying in bed when she realizes that her heart isn't pumping. Blood isn't coursing through her veins, her limbs spasm into weightlessness and she feels devoid of blood. Frantically, she reaches for her wrist to feel for a pulse, only to realize that there are no bones in her hand.

They found her.

Creatures are climbing out of the walls, snakes slithering and insects flittering closer and closer, teasing her, condemning her, judge and jury and she realizes this is her execution.

Her head snaps from the pillow as she claws at the hand, tearing the skin. Her nails aren't sharp enough.

She wonders if the acrid tang particles on her tongue are the remnants of bone dust.

The phone rings, shrill, repetitive... won't. shut. up. She turns away from it, protecting her hand from its emissary frequencies. Her labored breathing increases into panicky jerks, shutting her eyes from the noise.

The shadow man drills holes into her eardrum, more room for sound waves.

"Scaphoid, Lunate, Triquetrum..." She loudly recites, frantically trying to block the noise. Deflect sound waves with her voice. "Pisiform, Trapezium..." Intricately delicate bones exceedingly important to the human structure, *the* evolutionary breakthrough since the last Ice Age, and they're all gone.

China bones. Fractured glass, shattered remains. Hollowed out with TNT-laced molecules.

And it keeps ringing. When the blood begins to seep, she finally feels her pulse raging from her hands and surging into her body, exploding in her skull. The phone rings in unison to the throbbing.

Snatches phone off wall, "Leave me the hell alone!" She doesn't wait for the stunned silence before yanking the cord out of the wall.

Somewhere along the way she ends up holding a razor.

The sheets around her begin to waver and rise from the bed; she blinks furiously to lower them back down.

She understands him perfectly now. What he wants from her.

The shadow man.

He'll suck her marrow dry, grinding her bones into grainy sediment and forcing her to shed her skin like a snake.

She is a vessel.

This she understands.

* * *

When he comes, kicking open the door after pounded knocks, she stares at him with wet eyes. "They're gone, sir, they're all gone. The bastards, they've taken my bones." She doesn't understand the shock on his face. She doesn't care. She just wants to understand why her bones have fractured and disintegrated into ash without her noticing.

She doesn't register him dialing his phone.

She doesn't care; she has more important things to do. She cuts open a vein.

* * *

He yells out orders, commands meant to speak to the instinctive soldier inside of her. But his voice is drowned out by her mournful protests, by the rush of blood roaring in her ears.

He doesn't understand, he cannot possibly understand the integral importance of stopping the shadow man in his tracks. The shadows are seeping through the hollowness of her empty hand and eating it's way down her arms. She needs to stop them.

She beats his chest as he wrestles the razor from her, her combat training kicking in as she shoots a well-aimed kick in his groin. He lets out a low breath and grunts in pain, only momentarily deferred. He covers her body with his heavy frame, trapping her arms above her head. Her blood coats his clothing as he tries to pry open her fingers. He's stronger than her, and the razor is thrown across the room.

'But it's okay', she thinks brightly. 'You have something better than a razor'.

He doesn't lose his tight grip around her wrists, nor the tight rigidity in his body. But he lets his head collapse on her neck as he tries to maintain his harsh breathing. For a moment, all she can hear are the jagged, exhausted breaths. Louder than jet engines, superimposed in the small confines of the room. Oh what the neighbors must be thinking. She wraps her ankles around his calves, grinding her pelvis into his. A feathery kiss right below the ear. Instinctively he rises almost imperceptibly, only a few degrees, so that he can stare at her in confused shock. 'It's enough', she thinks, as she head butts him.

His face contorts into a painful grimace as he lessons his grip on her. She snakes out from under him, grabbing her small side arm from under her pillow with clear intentions to shoot her outstretched palm.

He won't stop her.

Nobody can stop her.

He yanks her hand at the last minute, startling the trigger. She falls back at the resounding crack, inextricably aware of the acrid stench of gun residue and the burst of pain that envelops her. An overwhelming coppery taste springs onto her tongue. A black roar shoots in her ears, and she is more than a little bit grateful as the shadow man unfolds his arms and takes flight, drawing darkness in his wake.

She thinks one of two things.

The first one being, "at least I won't be buried in an empty casket."

The second one being, a bit ridiculously, "Goodbye and thanks for all the cockroaches."

* * *

**SJSJSJSJSJS**

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TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: When I use "SJSJSJSJS", it's usually meant to indicate a significant jump in time (e.g. Weeks/months) with no real transition.**

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There's a thick fog settling over her, permeating into her pores and weighing dully on her eyes.

Heavy pennies on a dead man's eyes.

Obscured faces drop shadows in her closed vision, infused in nacreous miasmas and filtering away at the glare of approaching white spots.

She wonders, vaguely, where the rest of her body went. But she can't focus on the question, and instead resigns herself to the slow seep and saturation of fog.

* * *

Sometimes she can see the shadows all around her, floating beneath her closed eyelids.

She sees his eyes, sometimes. The Colonels. And the Shadow man's. Some days, most days, they're interchangeable.

They're dark, sometimes black. Sometimes with the unblinking eightfold eyes of a spider. Piercing like thin tunnels of light through smoke.

She shies away from them, instinctively, focusing instead of the dark peripheries around her.

* * *

Awareness descends slowly

Voices wash over her. Familiar voices. Familiar territory.

They eventually drown away, and for a long while all she can hear is the sharp beeping of monitors.

Her left hand feels like wildfire.

Her right hand feels heavy... and oddly calloused.

Glaring artificial lights pierce through her closed eyelids.

Figures appear, shift, and she's left in the grey wake of their absences. Her frustration begins to mount as she flood of uncertainty pervades her mind.

A thought forms, and tenaciously she clings to it. But the ensuing headache grips her billion dollar brain and she's forced to release it, letting the lethargy dull her fears as whatever idea had formed, slips away without the linger of regret.

The fog is thick.

The voices come back. Leave again.

* * *

A bleary sort of life.

* * *

The words are disembodied, but occasionally they break through. The energy that they bear touches every nerve and synapse in her body, encouraging her. Disassembling her. But the heavy weight of sleep is powerful, far more powerful than the Shadow man ever was. The sluggish stupor tosses cables across her limbs, meant to restrain, and she's far too tired to resist. It feels like fibrous filters are placed over her ears, dulling the pitch and lowering the words into near incomprehensibility.

She hears them talking about that one mission on PX7-889, so long ago. That desert planet.

She tries to catch what they say, but a heat erupts from the tip of her toes and blazes into her body. The flames lick at her skin, coiling into her writhing figure. She can't possibly know that sweat has flushed across her skin as a fever rages in her body; all she knows is that the shadow man is burning. The fire glows brighter as the darkness ebbs away.

Erected upon a crucifix of fire.

No one will ever know of his smoldering remains.

* * *

"I didn't know." He repeats over and over. "I didn't know."

"It wasn't your fault, Jack." His reply was swiftly met with a low snarl.

"I should have known, Daniel. I wasn't there for her. It's my _job_ to know."

"But you were there, don't you get it? We would have found her dead on that motel floor if you hadn't gotten to her first."

"I had a three goddamn months to get to her."

* * *

"We can't contain it, Sir. Before the breakdown I suspected it was psychological, or even a chemical imbalance like Paranoid Schizophrenia. But the MRI reveals a shocking increase of blood flow to the brain, indicating an unusually high amount of neurological activity. Moreover the blood tests show a worrisome drop in white blood cells, it's eating away at her immune system. The bullet wound somehow acted as an instigator, as though the bacteria replicated by the trillions and simultaneously attacked each cell in her body. Simply put, her body is shutting down. Her organs are on the verge of failing altogether. I'm estimating that within a month she'll be put on dialysis."

"I need to hear a solution, Doctor. What can we do?"

"It's a virus unlike any I've ever seen. Obviously Sam's protein marker from Jolinar hasn't been able to deflect it. It's going to take far more than a few drips of antibiotics. We need to send a Hazmat team back to PX7-889 to conduct a full-scale investigation, and to see whether or not they can identify the species at fault and possibly extract its antibodies. But honestly, Sir, the microorganism could have sprung from anywhere."

"I suspected as much. SG-1 and SG-8 are prepping up as we speak. Is there anything else I can do?"

"Sir, I know so little about this disease. I have no idea how it's even transmitted, no clue how she could have contracted it. So far it seems that Sam is the only carrier, but I don't want to take any chances. We should at least notify the CDC that an experimental virus has possibly been exposed to the public. We need to find out about everyone she has come into contact with these past 5 weeks so that we can quarantine them if they display symptoms. It doesn't seem to be an airborne transmission; otherwise all of SG1 would show the same results. I suspect it's contained, but we should still keep tabs on all of her acquaintances, any possible sexual partners, I understand she belongs to a gym..."

"I see. Well keep me posted, Doctor. And for goodness sakes don't let her die on us."

"Sir, with all due respect, it's no longer up to me."

* * *

Her mental stupor makes her think of a Pacific tide. Drowning her at most intervals, but occasionally abating, cruelly.

Some unknown force inside gnaws between every cell, vibrating the particles to waken them from their slumber. It's a difficult task, as everything is dulled down by forced infrequency, but once energy begins momentum is formed.

And momentum is something she is very familiar with.

Bits and pieces of the conversation find their way into her closed eyes. Even in her unconscious state she grimly understands that she'll be getting a hell of lot less Christmas cards this year.

So the shadow man was just an off-world virus. Who would've figured?

She suspects it's a positive sign that she's berating herself in her head.

Now to work on getting those pesky eyelids open...

* * *

_There is a physical body, and a consciousness, but the thread in between has been severed. _

_Noises rise, and noises abate, and whirlwinds drown you. Or suffocates you._

_She resists the urge to gasp for breath._

_

* * *

_

When she was a child she had a dream that she was Gretel, from that freaky Grimm's story. She was walking through the woods eating candy when she came upon the witch. It was then, with her legs turned to lead and the witch ambling towards her that she realized 'I'm sleeping. This is a dream. I need to wake up.' But she couldn't wake up, no matter how hard she told herself to. The witch gobbled her up despite her rational reasoning that _'this wasn't real.'_

Three weeks of knowing she was in a dream state. Three weeks of being trapped inside of her body.

She knows it's a particularly bad year when she is forced to relieve the similar experience of _not only_ Jolinar, but the entity as well.

Daylight is awfully appealing. Even that bright-ass sun on that hot-ass desert planet she hated so much is awfully appealing.

Being in a coma is awfully dull.

Just plain ol' awful.

She can't quite believe that she's mentally fidgeting. She'd do the Colonel proud.

* * *

Flash of white, glimmer of fluorescent lights. Tears spring at the sudden brightness.

She feels her coma pulse through her body one last time before completely abating, the shadows rejoining their brethren.

_Yes!_

_

* * *

_

The first thing she notices is that the shadow is no longer in the corner of her eye.

No longer taunting her, curbing her vision like a goddamn horse blinder.

The second thing she notices is the tooth fuzz in her mouth. 'Bastards', she thinks affectionately, 'don't even have the courtesy to brush a girls teeth.'

The third thing she notices is the weight pressing down on her right side. The guardrail is carefully positioned away, she sees, and his BDU's desperately need some ironing. She looks at his cowlick pointed upwards, his head smashed beside her thigh, fingers curled like a child. She wonders if she should wake him, before someone walks in, only to realize that she can't do much beyond blinking.

She can hardly hold on to a single thought. The antiseptic coated air around her ebbs and attempts to swallow her whole and sink her back into murky depths. But a delicate thread of images and memories surfaces through the riptide, and she follows it into consciousness.

But the very second after she has formulated and devised an ingenious plan to wake him via her heart monitor he jolts upwards, eyes wide and astonished. She can't take her eyes off the red imprints of rumpled sheets that stand out against his craggy face.

_Jonah._ She remembers. The Colonel is Jonah, she is Thera. She can't quite believe the shadow man almost stole that from her.

"Hi." He states simply, his face resuming into his carefully composed nonchalance.

It takes her the space of three seconds to understand that she has a tube jammed down her throat.

'You can smile, Sam', she commands herself, 'c'mon zygomaticus, just a little.'

She thinks she makes more of a grimace than a smile, but the responding grin erases her doubt. Message: over and out.

* * *

It's only after five minutes of hacking out the plastic taste of the breathing tube that she is finally able to speak to him. Sure there are throngs of visitors standing outside of the curtain (and she has to remember to thank Janet, as she spits week-old phlegm into a cup, for providing them with this particular performance) and she could at least wait until after the morphine wears off so she could remember it. It's painful and her throat is hoarse and raw but she has to say it before she falls back into a hazy sleep.

"Sir, I am so sorry for kicking you in the balls."

With that said, she gratefully passes out, missing out on her CO's nervous laugh and awkward glance around the room full of suddenly rapt faces.

* * *

She wakes up gasping for air, eyes frantically flicking across the infirmary in dreaded anticipation. Fixed shadows elongate from fixed objects, and it feels like her heart skips a beat after a long freeze when she realizes the shadow man isn't watching over her.

* * *

They'll tell her later that the chamber she had entered on PX7-889 was a Goa'uld laboratory, which Daniel had mistaken for a native temple. Apparently she had breathed in some remnants of a century-old experiment and it took 10 virologists a whole week to find the antidote.

Other than her accidental ingestion of the virus, it wasn't in the slightest bit contagious. She wished that particular bit of information had been discovered _before _the US Air Force knocked on the doors of everyone she had talked to in the five weeks that she was a carrier.

Yep, the thought crosses her mind yet again, she'd be surprised if she got even one Christmas card this year.

* * *

She doesn't quite understand why all of a sudden the Colonel avoids looking at her. He visits her enough, as though double checking her physical status, before slipping back out through the myriads of curtains. She can't quite understand why whenever their eyes meet, he looks as though his stomach has dropped out and suddenly filled with the desire to escape.

He blames her, she figures.

She should have been more alert on that desert planet. She should have put double doses of concealer on those hickeys. She should have let him assume control that awful day in the motel room.

She should have trusted him enough to tell him.

She failed him.

* * *

"How you feeling, Sam?" Daniel ventures cautiously.

He puts out a sympathetic hand, which she immediately grabs and yanks him towards her, pulling him in for a tight hug.

He buries his face into her neck, an errant thumb sliding across the bandage around her wrist, and she knows she's forgiven.

* * *

She wriggles her outstretched hand. Who needs their pinkie anyway?

At least it was only the tip.

Damn.

She thinks she's just more embarrassed that she fainted from shooting herself in the pinkie than the actual loss. The last time she fainted it was a purposeful diversion technique to escape from that psycho warlord on P4X-298.

But still. _Fainted_. And in front of the Colonel too.

_Damn._

She stares at her reflection in the infirmary bathroom, fingering the tips of her cropped hair. She sighs, knowing she'll have to suffer through another bout of the pixie cut.

She smiles into the mirror.

'_But you're alive._'

* * *

Teal'c sits with her every second hour. Stealthily slipping past Janet's watchful eyes. It's her favorite part of the day, watching the overgrown alien sneak about like an errant schoolboy, merely to give her the company she so craves. It's a side of him she rarely has the honor to witness, and she sorely regrets not having a video camera to secretly film him with. He slips her blue Jell-O and blue popsicles, stuffing theoretical dissertations behind her pillow at the first opportunity.

He sits with her and laments to her in his expressionless voice about his disappointment with Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. But when he retells the plot, word for word, he squeezes her hand during the exciting bits.

Yea, he was always her favorite.

* * *

When she was a child, her father took them to the park so they could play with the children of his old war buddy, Colonel George Hammond. Instead of playing on the swings, she lay in a bed of sand, still wrapped up in her winter-coat and screwed up her eyes, blocking out her sight so she could hear the noises all around them. She filtered out the laughter and the creaks of the swing chains so she could focus on the two-toned whistle of a far off bird.

"It's a chickadee." A deep voice mentioned. "Black-capped."

Her eyes shot open, taking in the figure of the large man, ridiculously sitting cross-legged beside her on the snow-speckled sand.

"That's how you know spring is coming. My father told me that. Even if there's snow all around, if you hear that whistle, you know spring is on its way."

She studiously scrutinized the dead trees, the grey clay sky, the drifting snow dunes, before settling on a bright green weed sticking out of the white dust. She looked up at him, offering him a brilliant smile.

Years later, as she lies on a different kind of bed, delightedly watching the nurses roll away the monitors and crash carts, General George Hammond makes his way to her side. He smiles down on her fondly.

"Guess what I heard this morning."

Like he had to ask.

"Was it by chance a black-capped chickadee?" She replies, softly.

He covers her hand with his large, freckled one.

"And it's not even winter yet. Guess they must be whistling for you."

* * *

She knows it's a beautiful day. Daniel told her so.

Besides, it has to be beautiful outside. She feels it in her bones, which, by the way, are all accounted for.

She slips into the rose-colored sweater he had picked up for her, her jeans far too baggy to put on. The green BDU pants will have to do. She's not supposed to be discharged for a few more hours, but there's no harm in preparation. She quickly sits back down on the bed, in case Janet should suddenly appear. She folds one ankle under her thigh as she stares at the grey wall. _Almost._ She smoothes down the comfortable cotton wrinkles, wincing as her hands slide past sharp ribs. She lost more weight than she's comfortable admitting.

"Sam."

She turns her head, smiling warmly as Janet enters the room, the surety of her grin slipping at the confusion on her friends face.

Janet's eyebrows are crossed together. "Why are you dressed up in civvies?"

Her smile freezes. Falters.

"My name's on the discharge board."

Something in the doctor's face tightens, a clench of muscle beside her left eye that is somehow inextricably linked to the pull and lock of her jawbone. A vague sense of apprehension floats between their visions, and Janet reluctantly puts one foot in front of the other, trying to build basic sentence structures.

"I, I forgot to erase it."

She scrunches her eyebrows together, catching her breath. She clutches tightly at her rose sweater_; today was going to be beautiful._

She swivels her whole body forward on the bed. "Oh no, Janet. You told me a week ago I'd be ready to leave. You said so yourself, I'm cured. I'm leaving this place _today_, you said, come hell or high water."

Janet winces. "You're right. I did tell you that. But that was before the last lab analysis came in. I wanted to triple check it to be sure it wasn't a side effect of the virus."

Cold fear clamps down on her heart. _But she had felt him burn away._

"Sam." She places a gentle hand on her knee. "Sam you're pregnant."

Something in her eye twitches, clicks, and for a minute she sits there wondering if she heard right. Janet stares her down, conveying to her the utmost seriousness of her words.

She laughs, nervously, _bullshit. _"That's impossible, Janet. You know that as well as I do. I had my shot last month and every month previous. You told me..."

The doctor sighs, interrupting her. "And I also told you that the only 100% effective birth control is abstinence." She lifted a hand at her friend's instinctive snort. "Sam, even though I believe without a shadow of a doubt that you're entirely free of the Goa'uld virus, I can't positively confirm or determine every effect it had on your body chemistry. In fact, we _knew_ that the birth control could potentially lose its effectiveness since Jolinar left her protein marker in you. We've been prepared for this possibility_."_

Prepared.

As her heart stutters to a close, she can't help but think that _nothing _could have prepared her for this.

* * *

The ultrasound is done in silence. At first Janet attempts to assuage Sam's tension while circling the gel on her stomach, but the coiled muscles below refuse to unclench. As the grey-blue glare of the monitor washes across the dark room, the woman lying flat on her back turns her head and faces some indecipherable clipboard.

Finally, Janet whispers, cautious of the strained rigidity of the room.

"It's there, Sam. It's not much, if you want to take a look. It's the dark spot to the left. It looks like a shadow in your uterus."

But she can't look; all she can register is the _shadow_ and her throat as it pulsates with the vinegary bite of bile.

* * *

She feels his eyes on her. _Shadow man's?_ A day later. Her rose sweater crumpled and wrinkled from dried gel and from being slept in. She's sitting in the same position as the day previous- _deja vue._ Her head quickly snaps to the open curtain, her large smile drifting away at the coldness in his eyes. He's leaning against the wall, hands jammed into pockets.

"Sir. Hi."

He stares at her for a moment, considering her, before offering a strained smile. He walks closer towards her, offhandedly jerking the curtain shut.

"Janet give you the all clear?"

She nods, slowly and stiffly. "She wanted to run one more test."

He sucks in a cheek, lips thinning in that awkward facial expression of his.

"So you heard the news, huh?"

She scrunches her fingers in the fabric, feeling something boil deep down in her esophagus.

"Apparently, so have you."

He has the decency to give her face a moment of respite as he stares at the floor.

"Yea, well, one of the nurses spilled it." He chuckles mirthlessly. "Thought she was joking at first."

She doesn't think she can bear the swell and taut strain of the tension between them. _Just say it. Just tell me what I am and leave me be._

Her eyes trail down as he fiddles with his thumbnail,

"So did I." She admitted. His head snaps up.

"So you really didn't know?"

Something inside her hardens and congeals.

"Can't say I was too focused at counting down the calendar at the time." She stares hard at him.

His faces stills and cements, for a moment, and she wonders if it's out of anger or embarrassment.

"Sir." She finishes lamely.

He sucks in his other cheek, his Adam's apple bobbing against the minute stubble on his neck, before exhaling a tightly controlled breath. "So you're all packed?"

She shrugs, didn't have much to begin with.

He keeps glancing from her face to the guardrail of the bed anxiously, nervously. She wonders if that was the question he really wanted to ask. _How could you do this? What are you going to do? _More likely- _How do you feel? _But that question is too much, even for him.

She can't take it anymore.

"Sir, please." _Just spit it out._

He awkwardly runs a hand through his already mussed hair.

"We, uh, I need, Janet. Janet needs to know who the father is. She doesn't think the virus is... sexually transmitted, but she'd like to run some tests just to be safe."

She thinks she should laugh. This is just one giant fucking comedy where she's been pushed from the front row into center stage. She looks up at the Colonel, with his tight, controlled face and hard black eyes. She drops her head as though to indicate she understands.

He straightens, wiping every trace of expression from his face as he gives a cursory nod, the coldness filtering back into his eyes.

"So, you know, when you have the chance... We'll set up an appointment for him."

He clenches his jaw as she turns away from him, staring at the wall. It's only when she hears his forced whistle drown away that she realizes he's gone.

And up and out the window goes shrieking out that beautiful day.

* * *

Both Daniel and Teal'c drive her home, the Colonel supplying some unremarkable excuse to be absent. She leans her forehead against the cold sheen of the window, watching as solid forms dissolve into parallel lines that race across her vision.

She begs off when they try to stay and order pizza, feigning tiredness. When she closes the door, she realizes that she hasn't been home in months.

The house feels cold and empty, almost resentful at having been untended for so long.

With a racing heart she stands still, resisting the old urge to go into the kitchen and find a knife.

Somebody was in here, she notes dispassionately, cleaning up the glass shards and replacing all the light bulbs.

But not the shadow man.

Never the shadow man.

The Colonel is the only one with a spare key to her house, and in that moment, as she envisions him stretching upwards and screwing in the bulbs, sweeping up the glass, she is overcome with sheer mortification_._

_Anybody_, anybody but _him._

_

* * *

_

It's so damn dark in here.

There's a swell in the ceiling, a rotund mound of cracked paint and waterlogged plaster. Knowing what she knows of James Mackenzie, the setting doesn't exactly _jive _with his clinical personality. She remembers him from before, from last time. When he trapped her in her mind to force her to seek out Daniel. It's been a while though, judging by the thinness of his hair. Most of her subsequent psych evaluations have been performed by complacent, unseasoned graduates from the Academy, and she found herself quickly rebuilding old walls at the sight of his intense stare.

His voice is low and gravelly, and the narration reminds her of old anti-drug videos that she was forced to watch in high school. _And kids, only street vagrants and promiscuous women smoke marijuana..._ a 50's style host with a son in a tie and cufflinks, a wife with a bouffant hairdo and a daughter with a shotgun barrel bra.

His squinty eyes narrow, suspicious of her long silence as he contemplates her. He leans back in his green leather chair, and she half suspects he'll lift a pipe to his lips. But instead, sighing, he repeats his question.

"What were some of the things this... _shadow man_... said to you?"

She stares off at a point past his shoulder. How could she explain to him that it wasn't so much words spoken, sentences and threats clearly constructed and formed and aimed into her ear. How could he possible understand that it wasn't so much a voice, though she had created one, and it wasn't so much a physical form, as she had first seen him, as it was the intimation of his energy crawling in the spaces and matter between her cells. How his laughs drifted on the round tubes of her blood cells and taunted his way down the conical edges of her veins...

As words form in her mouth, he clears his throat pointedly, and a wave of nausea ebbs over her as she clams up. Old threats emerge_; it's dangerous to talk. _She smiles thinly, shrugging.

"Not much. Just your typical 'the FBI is probably watching you' rants." She laughs a brittle, dutiful noise. "Any more of that and I'd be walking around the SGC in a tinfoil hat."

His face is slack, clearly disbelieving and bored by the usual reticence. He murmurs, scratching something on his notepad as she spares another glance at the sagging ceiling.

* * *

She's at the park, strolling down the long laneways with Daniel. She loops her arm through his and tucks her head in his neck. He smiles, murmuring into her hair as the un-mowed grass around them begins to billow and sway. The glint of black steel catches her attention, and she raises her head to stare ahead to her house. The Colonel's black truck is parked in front; the driver's seat open and the man himself watching them as they slowly make their way across the street. He fidgets, awkwardly, guiltily, at their curious stares, before reaching behind him for the papers bags of cold Chinese food. He waggles it temptingly, and they both spare tight smiles.

A peace offering.

So this is what they've been reduced to.

* * *

Sometime during the night she wakes up gasping, shooting up out of bed and staring at her bookcase. A giant part of her is so tempted to drag it out of her room, past the kitchen and out the back door.

But that would be giving in.

A wave of nausea sweeps through her, and she stumbles into the bathroom and collapses in front of the porcelain bowl, clutching the sides as she heaves her life away.

She stops briefly to breath, sucking in a shuddering breath as she watches a line of spit bead into the water. She slides an absent hand over her flat stomach, wondering when she'll begin to feel the fluttering of life. She thinks, then, maybe she has already felt it. Mistaking it for the shadow man.

Maybe it's _his _child.

She pukes and pukes and pukes, and realizes that she'll never be able to escape the lingering doubt of whether or not she's crazy.

Afterwards she wipes her mouth with a short length of thin, rough toilet paper, and stares at the wall.

Any imagined noise, any bump in the night, and she'll rub her calloused finger over her scarred palm, and grip her nails into her growing womb.

Hate replacing the guilt.

* * *

She stares at the flicking red light on the answering machine. It's Mark. Mark whom she only recently reconciled with and only recently regained his trust and Mark who's completely oblivious to the psychotic issues of his sister and Mark who's about to be an uncle and Mark who's about to lose all respect and faith in her once again.

* * *

For a long minute all she can hear is the tapping of his pencil on his knee, as she pretends to contemplate his question with every intention of completely wasting her fifty minutes.

Her eyes drift from the dim, green-glass shaded lamp back to the expunged sagging of plaster, pursing her lips as though she's genuinely mystified.

Abruptly, he stands up and strides over to the window, yanking the green blinds up from their dusty perch. The sudden onset of bright light is blinding, and her pupils contract plaintively as she shies from the glare. Mackenzie frowns down at her, roughly releasing the plastic handle.

"If you have to be distracted by something," he mutters gruffly, "you might as well stare at something a little more mentally stimulating than a leak in the ceiling."

She stares at him, speechless.

He plops back into his chair, his notepad resuming its original spot on his lap.

"So what's this fixation about cockroaches all about?"

* * *

When it finally hits her that she's pregnant, with a different man's child, she throws her coffee mug at the wall on that sunny afternoon and screams into the mirror.

Afterwards she rakes the dead leaves off her yard, wordlessly, before raking the yards of each neighbor she had once mentally accused of treason. Offering each one her brilliant, strategic Samantha Carter smile. The Shadow Man smile.

* * *

How fucking convenient. Little ol' Sam finally gets the baby she's always _wanted_, from a man she desired when she freaking out of high school, and now maybe she'll finally get the break from SG1 that she's always secretly wished for.

And baby makes... for one emotionally unstable "family".

* * *

She's nervous, clenching her fingers in her sane, normal floral skirt and passes off a reasonably sane "ha ha ha- totally normal girl talking here" grin. She builds up the courage to tell the professor, and even though he's delighted to see her at first, by the end of their encounter he's getting that panicky "how the hell do I get out of this" expression.

But why would she think otherwise.

'Hey, I'm that girl you fucked on numerous occasions awhile back, who might have infected you with god knows what, and congratulations you're going be a daddy! Wanna come with me to Lamaze?'

She's not the slightest bit surprised, though somewhat offended, when he opts out of accompanying her to the next ultrasound.

It's only the next day as Janet draws blood from his arm when she gets her answer once and for all.

"Hey," he laughs nervously, "it might not even _be_ mine."

He whimpers when Janet jabs him harder with the needle, and looks down at the floor when all three men of SG1 shoot death glares at him.

But she kisses him on the cheek, absently, when he leaves. She understands him, his motives. She played him, and now she pays the consequences.

The Colonel stands behind her as the door closes shut, his body rigid and radiating with tension. But not towards her, she knows.

"I can't believe that sonufa-bitch is going to walk away."

She shrugs. "Doesn't matter, Sir, it wasn't his fault I got him into this mess."

She feels his stare.

"You really believe that, don't you?"

She walks out the door, abruptly. Turning only when he calls out after her.

"We're here for you, Sam." He stands tall and resolute, arms crossed and gaze unwavering.

She tries not to throw him a dirty look. _Sam?_! What the hell was so wrong with "Carter?"

Why did this baby have to come and fuck everything up?

* * *

Dead leaves whip out from passing tires below, the light reflecting off the grey clouds outside and streaming into the wide expanse of windows. An expectant cough draws her attention away from the view.

"Well?"

She sighs. The external brightness draws out the shadows in his face, elongating yellow lines in the blue of his iris, sharpening them. His shape is a dark contrast to the white light.

"What would you like me to say, Dr. Mackenzie? No, I don't feel the urge to slit my wrists. No, I don't have any plans to go postal at work, and no I'm not going to go home and sit in a dark corner and cry all night."

"That's not what I asked you."

"But you're thinking it."

She can almost hear the amusement in his silence.

"You sound awfully confident of the state of _my _mind, how about the state of yours?"

She stares back out the window. She once thought all doctors' officers to be barren and white-walled, not open and distracting.

"All I know is that I need to get through this. One last time."

"This? I don't understand, Major, get through what?"

She blows out an irritated breath, refusing to look at him.

"This... this _pregnancy_, obviously."

He stays silent for a long time, considering.

"And after?"

She looks over at him, seemingly for the first time.

* * *

It's the last time she opts to talk about her pregnancy with the Doctor.

* * *

Cassandra folds the chess board together, apologetically kissing her on the cheek as a friend outside calls for her.

Her adopted mother grimaces as the girl rushes past her, cringing at the loud slam of the screen door. She rolls her eyes and smiles down on her visiting friend, a wary look in her eyes.

It was difficult, getting back into the swing of things. For a while Cassie was unrepentantly unforgiving, unable to fully grasp the extent of the virus' hold on her.

But what could she say? Hey, cool aunt Sam went ape-shit and can only see you under strict supervision until her court-marshaled psychiatrist gives her the all clear?

Things take time, people keep telling her. 'Things change, you adjust, _you move on'_, they think, but complacently tell her something else.

She gives a soft smile as Janet eases into the patio chair, curling her legs underneath the beige skirt.

"Sam..." she begins. She stares at her for an indeterminable amount of time, not quite knowing how to say it. "As your doctor, it's my responsibility to inform you of your options." Janet gives her friend a hard look at her impatient sigh. "Sam... There's always the option to terminate."

She's frozen into immobility, considering.

Quick fix- she thinks. No late night feedings, no diaper emergencies. She's surprised she didn't think of this before.

Life could go back to how it used to be. Before the shadow man.

She never really thought about the A-word too much in her lifetime, despite knowing plenty of female friends in the same predicament. Young women forced to choose between their careers or to begin a family. She knows the statistics; once a woman has a child her career takes a slippery slope. She supposed she was pro-choice, but she saw the posters in subway stations, the pictures of curled fingers. It's a moral dilemma for every woman, she just never really thought about what she'd do if it ever came to this.

She never wanted a baby this way.

But she can't imagine ever recovering her former life.

This isn't her child. This is the child of PX7-889. But she can't tell that to Janet, she can't face those worried, condemning eyes. Cassandra wasn't her child either.

She turns her head away.

But she knows that she'll always feel that flicker of a shadow in her womb, and that she will be haunted by a different sort of shadow for the remainder of her life, baby or no baby.

* * *

Part of her misses the motel room. Even the goddamn cockroaches. At least there, with the smell of stale sex, the broken TV, the flicker of far-off strip signs her only source of light, at least there she didn't have to face herself.

She closes her eyes, and remembers what it felt like to be bathed in the vapor of that neon purple glow.

* * *

She considers it seriously for a while. Daniel is aghast.

"Because Daniel! Because, I always figured I'd have a child on my own fucking terms."

He shakes his head furiously (like an anxious child, she thinks) and clutches his pencil in his hands, breaking it into two.

"It's my body, it's my life. How _dare_ you judge me! You have _no_ idea..." He cuts her off.

"I know it's your life, Sam! I know what it is you want _now,_ Sam, but I also know _you!_ I recognize that other women do it for their own personal, understandable reasons, but their reasons aren't _your _reasons. You're just thinking about doing it because you're too caught up in your own goddamn fears, and I know you, Sam, I know you know deep down that that's not enough of a justification for *you*. This decision will follow you for the rest of your life."

She seethes at him, unwilling to give him the satisfaction that he might be right. That she would always be haunted, with or without this baby.

"You don't know anything about me, Daniel. Don't even try."

But she walks away with her mind made up.

* * *

"He reminded me of Colonel O'Neill." She mutters in a half-whisper.

"And why is that?"

"I don't really know why. It was just _him, _and... not him."

He waits her out. She looks up warily, unsure of how much she should reveal, worried of speaking too much.

"It's just... I saw eyes all the time. Everywhere I looked they were watching me. I'd shut my eyes and they were there. And they were the Colonel's eyes. And then sometimes I'd hear muttering, like a far-off voice in a crowd, and I'd look expecting to see him."

He looks unsurprised. "It's not uncommon for delusions to manifest themselves as a physical embodiment of someone with a commanding role in your life, especially one whom you respect."

She tilts her chin, her curiosity outweighing her desire to dwell on the Colonel's 'commanding role in her life'. "Do you think that the Goa'uld actually purposefully created the virus that way? To give me temporary schizophrenia by injecting a hallucination?"

Mackenzie chuckles. "Major Carter, I'd pay to know the answer to that. As far as we know, the virus only attacked your mental status, so I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. We don't even know if it was designed to attack a human physiology. But..." He shakes his head woefully, "well, what a bullshit use of a biological weapon."

She tries, at first, to smother her laugh. But her surprise is stronger than her suspicion of him, and for the first time in five or so years she finds herself warming up to Dr. Mackenzie.

Especially, as he leads her to the door after his strict "50 minutes _only" _session, he breaks his rule by murmuring to her, "I'd also pay to see the look on Colonel O'Neill's face when you decide to tell him."

She smiles at him, but on the car ride home she seriously contemplates that statement. The Colonel clings to guilt like a moth to a flame, if she tells him who the shadow man really was, he would find a way to resent himself for it.

She's resolute. He'll never know.

* * *

She and Daniel sort of make up, despite their differences in opinion, and he designates himself as official "feeder of crazy pregnant lady with even crazier cravings."

She thinks the Colonel is almost jealous of the amount of time Daniel spends with her, and his place in her life. After Daniel confessed to the team that he's spending many nights sleeping on her couch, she can't help but notice afterwards how determinedly her CO avoids sitting on it. In a spot so deep inside of her, so immersed in layers of guilts it's barely recognizable, she feels a cruel satisfaction.

* * *

She's at the supermarket, trying to talk herself out of a Ben & Jerry's, when in the reflection of the glass she sees that Mathematics Professor she had once known intimately, flirting with a woman barely out of graduate school. He looks at her, and doesn't recognize her. But why would he? With her stretch marks and grotesquely changing body she doesn't even know herself anymore.

She doesn't even wait until she get's home to snap off the ice cream lid, self-indulging in the parking lot watching the snow fall.

* * *

When she feels that first kick, things merely take a turn for the worst.

It has no goddamn right to be in there.

A small part of her wishes that it wasn't her hand she was aiming for that night in the motel.

* * *

She's afraid, that she'll always feel like this.

* * *

Her body stretches and lungs compress and she spends more and more time in the gym at Cheyenne mountain, pushing herself harder and harder on the treadmill, memories of the shadow man at her heels, until one-day the Colonel's hands wrap under her breasts and yanks her off of it.

"Jesus Carter, there are other ways of getting rid of this baby."

He glares at her, the heat in his eyes flickering briefly into something akin to disgust. She thinks of snow falling in an empty parking lot, and she jerks her arm away from him.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she snarls at him.

She wants him to be mad at her; she wants him to hate her. She cannot stand this new 'Jack', this new man who she knows she hasn't done a thing to deserve. She needs him to be her Commanding Officer. She can't take the soft look in his eyes, the gentleness behind his words. She needs orders and regulations and the occasional snarky attitude.

She hates, _hates _this goddamn baby.

* * *

Teal'c arrives at her front door with a tub of paint and two pairs of ridiculous looking coveralls.

"Major Carter? Is it not customary for one to prepare a nursery before the arrival of an infant?"

Two hours later they sit on the newspaper-swathed floor wearing the stupid looking coveralls splattered in yellow paint, lazily passing the ice cream bowl between each other. She feels almost drunk as she licks the spoon dry, slouching further down the freshly coated wall to find a comfortable place to sprawl.

"The thing is, Teal'c, I'm starting to understand you a bit better."

He raises his signature eyebrow.

"It's like we're both carrying a larvae symbiote, only mine is creating absolute havoc on my body."

He stares at her curiously. "I was under the impression, Major Carter, that Taur'i pregnancy is a wondrous predicament, invoking a strong sense of maternal feelings in an expectant mother."

She snorts. "Maybe on TV, Teal'c, but what I'm feeling for this thing inside of me is far from maternal. Something to put up with, I guess."

He's silent for a long while. Eventually, wordlessly, he unbuckles his coverall, raising his black t-shirt over his head. He gently places her hand on his stomach, so she can feel the slithering motions and slippery slide of the creature below. She feels nausea creep up in her throat. He then places her hand back on her covered belly, circling it until both hands find a flutter of a heartbeat. The sickening feeling slowly dissipates with each beat.

"You are mistaken, we share no similarities in this regard."

She stares at their entwined hands for a long time, feeling her pulse throb in unison to the tiny pulse inside of her.

She knows he's right.

* * *

"The worst part was when I couldn't even function off-world anymore." She surprises herself by the blatant honestly, especially when it's directed to a man she mistrusted for her entire term at the SGC. "I mean it was one thing when the shadows bothered me at home. I could deal with that. There was no real off/on switch for it, but whenever I was at work the shadow man seemed to control my movements so nobody would detect any differences." She spreads her hands out, illustrating the points. "So for awhile it was fine, it was just my dirty little secret that would really only incapacitate me when I was at home or at the motel. But it was near the end that, I dunno, things got out of hand. I mean I couldn't even think straight out on a simple field assignment or recon mission, and logically I knew and understood I was putting the team at risk. But somehow the shadow man would rationalize it for me or somehow persuade me to not say a word, even though _I knew it was wrong."_

Mackenzie sits patiently, completely still as though any movement might cause a break in the longest speech that she's uttered thus far. She stares up at him, suddenly vehement.

"And it makes me so freaking angry too. I fought alongside them for all these years and the entire time they were completely oblivious to what I was going through. I mean yeah the shadow man was good at making me pretend otherwise, pretending everything was okay. But goddamnit _there were signs!" _As her voice rises, she's ignorant of the satisfied quirk on Mackenzie's upper lip.

"Perhaps they were caught up in their own affairs."

She flicks a finger on a nail, pursing her lips angrily.

"So _what_? I mean I get they're all feeling guilty _now_ and everything, but I just cannot believe that nobody acknowledged that something was missing from me. I thought they knew me. Sure I can get caught up in my work to the point of forgetting to _eat_, but my teammates are absolutely everything to me, Dr. Mackenzie. I'm closer to them than I ever was to my own family, and I _know _that if something like this happened to them I would catch on in a heartbeat."

He nods, thoughtfully. "Well why do _you_ think they were distracted?"

She falls back into her chair, defeated. "I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm not surprised. Granted, Teal'c probably did suspect earlier than the others, he's hinted at it before. He's definitely the observant one of the group. I just can't understand why he didn't come forward with his suspicions."

"Perhaps he was unsure if it was his place to do so."

She snorts. "And risk putting the team at risk? I don't think so."

"Well don't forget Samantha," She's oblivious to the fact that somewhere along the line she's allowed him to call her by her name. "The past two years have been very difficult for you. There was the incident with Jolinar, your father's brush with cancer, his subsequent joining, that... computer virus thing, the death of Martouf, the kidnapping... shall I go on?" She shakes her head, hiding a smile at the dramatization of his listing. He continues. "It would stand to reason that these fairly recent events would catch up with you emotionally."

She nods, thoughtful. "And Teal'c would probably think that it was high time I went on a vacation." She smiles. "I always did appreciate how he'd give you your privacy when you felt on the edge of a mental breakdown. Sometimes you have to work things out yourself. I hate it when Colonel O'Neill tries to, you know, _fix things_ by talking it out, or working it out, when all I need it time and, well, privacy."

He clasps his hands together. "And then there's Dr. Jackson."

She sucks in a cheek. "Well, I guess I can't say I'm too surprised. Obliviousness is just Daniel's forte. It's a personality trait that I knew from the get go. He's like me, most of the time. We just get sucked up in the work that it's hard to look around at the full picture."

"Which leaves..."

"Colonel O'Neill." She finishes for him. She looks out the window, again. "I just can't wrap my head around it. I mean, he's black-ops trained, we've worked side by side all these years, and sometimes I think he knows me better than my own father. And he had absolutely no fucking clue."

"Were you hurt by this?"

"Yes! I thought he knew me. I'm his second in command; he relies on my judgment every moment of every day. The fact that he was able to... _miss this..." _She sighs, shocked by her own words, "makes me question if I _know him." _She looks up at the Doctor. "And it makes him less reliable to me."

He nods, interested. "And this is a negative thing?"

She recoils in horror. "Of course it is! One ounce of mistrust could prove fatal out on the field! What if he makes a command decision that I begin to second-guess?"

"Well, do you honestly feel he will be less trustworthy when you're out on a mission?"

She stills, contemplating for a long time before responding. "No, I suppose not."

He leans back in his chair. "Major, you and I both know that Colonel O'Neill is by far not a perfect man." She nods; her eyes pinned on him. "But despite this, anybody with eyes can see that you've put him on some sort of pedestal." He raises a hand at her angry denial. "I wouldn't go so far as to call it hero worship, but I'll be willing to wager a guess that whenever you're in a situation in the field where you have to make a command decision of any sort, it's his voice you hear in your head, guiding your critical thinking processes."

Her swift flush quickly confirms this.

"Samantha, it's unquestionable that you're young and bright and full of potential. And it's obvious that you're being groomed for command. But the only way you'll be able to achieve this is when you begin to think for yourself."

She stares at her clasped hands for a long time, and he'll spend the next week wondering, not for the first time, if he overstepped his bounds.

* * *

"You know it's not all bad." He stares down at his hands. "Being a parent."

She looks at him from over her microscope, not fully knowing why he had sat down across from her in the first place. He chuckles, a bitter sound.

"I didn't want Sara to have the baby." Clenches his jaw. "Ironic, huh? I mean I didn't tell her to get rid of it or anything. But I didn't ever want to be father." He looks up at her. "But the idea grew on me, and by the time he was born I couldn't ever imagine going back to who I was before."

She's speechless. He hasn't talked this much about Charlie in years.

"Sir..." she finally starts, quieting at his upraised hand.

"I don't want to hear it Carter, we all know you hate this baby. I'm just here to tell you that you might end up feeling differently."

She's already shaking her head.

"I sincerely doubt that, Sir."

He smiles at her, and she tenses at the amused pity in his face.

* * *

Daniel gets food poisoning again. They get downtime, again. She drives her newly repaired motorcycle (and a highly inconveniencing baby bump) north into Wyoming _again, _spurring the vehicle into unimaginable speeds, _again, _faintly hoping to that at the end of the icy road is concrete oblivion, and she that she will be gladly swallowed up.

But the end of the road happens to be a roadside diner with bad coffee and overflowing ashtrays, and a Shoshone waitress that sits her down in an empty booth and spends the evening fondly bitching to her about lazy husbands and rotten kids.

She eats reportedly the best damn apple pie in three counties.

She watches the snowfall with a trucker from California, sipping coffee and swapping stories. There's black ice on the road, and he convinces her to hitch a ride with him back to Colorado Springs. He insists on putting the bike into the back of the rig unaided, and she's almost insulted at the delicacy in which he treats her. As though she is some frail thing to be bubble-wrapped. She jokingly calls him on it, as he helps her into the high seat of the cab. But his answer is serious.

"It's not you I'm worried about. It's that baby. What were you thinking driving up here?"

What was she thinking? She's beginning to wonder the same thing.

As they drive back into El Paso County, some soft country song dying away on the radio, she flips through his wallet as he describes the photos of his children. He laughs about the time he had to bail his teenaged son out of jail after the kid had tried to organize a sit-in, and she remembers the waitress back at the diner who did nothing but complain about her family, love simmering behind the carping.

It's not until she's at home, curled up on the couch, that she realizes she wants to one day affectionately bitch to her friends about her _own_ family, and as the tremors overtake her she lets out a hoarse laugh.

She's tired of being afraid.

* * *

She looks at herself in the mirror, eyeing the faint lines around her eyes and the white, puckered scar that runs along her hairline.

She doesn't see old, she doesn't see defeat.

She doesn't see weakness and she certainly doesn't see fear.

She sees an incredibly strong woman who once stumbled and picked herself right back up.

For the first time in her life she believes every compliment paid to her in her life.

Beauty. Wit. Intelligence. Determination. Stubbornness. Charm.

She sees courage.

* * *

She's proud of herself when she restrains the urge to leap on the Colonel when he knocks on her door, a giant grin on his face and a written letter of consent by Dr. Mackenzie to return to SGC, claiming her official sanity. The excitement in his eyes had nearly catapulted her into his arms.

But that would be weird.

And awkward, she thinks as he glances, mentally slaps himself, and glances again over at her slightly larger breasts.

Definitely awkward.

But it's sort of nice, she has to admit as she reaches over him for some popcorn. After weeks of the Colonel sort of tiptoeing around her, trying to find his place in her changing world, she's glad he's finally figured it out.

And most of all she's glad to reach inside of herself to find that she's forgiven him.

* * *

She frames the ultrasound photo, but not before making dozens of copies and mailing them out to everyone she knows. Her brother calls and they talk for hours, and she's surprised at his magnanimous, accepting attitude. He demands the baby be named after him if it's a boy, and she laughingly refuses. Her sister-in-law clamors for the phone, and she can hear them bickering affectionately in the background.

She's never felt closer to her family.

* * *

The Colonel sees her across the street, and she yells at him when he jogs out into traffic. He grins boyishly at her, and despite her protests he prudently ignores her and follows her around like a lost puppy for the rest of the day.

After the movie ends she leans against the film poster tacked to the wall, griping about her back. He stares at her intently, the soft smile drifting away. He asks if she's made a decision about work.

"What do you mean?"

He reminds her of that conversation so many years ago, sitting by an off-world campfire. It had been Cassie's birthday, and the topic of conversation eventually drifted to children. Daniel had insisted that if ever he had kids he would be hard pressed to continue working on SG1. When the question came to her, she surprised herself at the answer.

"I think I'd drop out too", she had once said. "I know what it's like to lose a mother at a young age, I couldn't do that to my kids."

She hates him for bringing that up. A flash of fury sparks in her eyes.

"That was a long time ago, _Sir_, priorities change. I'm not about to give up the fight against the..." his hand clamps down on her warningly, "just so I can stay at home and... and _bake cookies_..."

He nods, approvingly. A flicker of agreement and something like regret skims briefly across his face.

The crowd from the theatre empty out, jostling them as the Colonel leads her away. He's pushed closer to her, grinning as she distractedly flicks out a popcorn kernel from inside her shirt. He waggles his eyebrows.

He watches as she laughs, embarrassed, her smile fading at the look in his eyes. His hand rests on the bump, his eyes occasionally flickering down. When he leans in, assumedly about to kiss her she pushes him away and turns her back on him.

She never wanted him this way.

And she knows that if they start now, she'll grow to hate him for it.

She hates him now, for his weakness. Five years of knowing each other and all it took was a fertilized egg and a brief fling with insanity for him to come on to her. Apparently Rodney McKay wasn't the only one with a thing for hospital gowns.

She knows he never wanted her this way either.

She hears a resigned sigh as she walks away, and is so eternally grateful that he treats her no differently the next morning.

* * *

She wakes up suddenly in the night, her eyes instinctively drawn to the bookcase. She slides a protective arm around her womb, and tries to calm her breathing.

She listens, intently, realizing that the noise wasn't merely some remnant of an old, psychotic memory. She hears it again. She clamors out of bed, very aware of the sheer thinness of her tank top, and not once does she take her arm off her belly.

It turns out to be a raccoon scraping the wall outside of her window.

She plops back down on the bed, relieved. A grin lights up her face, now _this_ was something she could handle.

Something tangible, something defeatable.

Her world finally contorts into reality.

* * *

Her neighbor still glares at her from the green-tinted window.

She pitiably bends down to pick up the newspaper, sighing, and for the first time thinks fondly of the virus. At least the shadow man had the courage to stand up for her.

She lifts her head from the printed text of the article, staring ahead at the poplar trees, her eyebrows scrunching together.

Well screw that.

She turns to meet the glowering eyes of the neighbor, grinning broadly and sticking a middle finger up in the air.

She doesn't need a virus to be able to tell somebody off.

* * *

She wonders if he goes to a tanning salon.

A ridiculous thought, she knows, but _really?_

"Dammit, Daniel, all I need is a freaking crescent wrench!"

She turns her head to an imperceptible degree as he changes positions, curling her toes with anticipation. His t-shirt pulls with the movements of his shoulder blades as he bitches at Daniel, riding up to a reveal a darkly tanned back.

It's the dead of winter. She's been walking around looking like a reject from Night of the Living Dead, and he looks like he's been sleeping next to the sun.

"Jack, if IKEA wanted us to be using... wrenches... they would've illustrated it on the instructions! You're just going to mess it up."

It has to be off world. Has to be. They've been to dozens of hot planets; chances are he had to pick up _some_ sun.

But she can't quite recall the last time he whipped off his t-shirt on any one of those planets.

Her mouth goes dry at the visual.

She's unsurprised. The pregnancy book _did _allude to something relating to... the 'wanting' that usually accompanies loneliness. Otherwise known as horniness.

"For the last time," he slowly spits out, "I am not going to mess this up. I've built one of these things before ya know, I can do it again."

She wonders if it's an all over tan.

"Jack." Daniel states seriously. "There is only one certainty in my life, only one piece of knowledge that I will take to my grave in complete confidence, and that is to never, *never* go against IKEA instructions." He looks disdainfully at the Colonel. "Besides, whose bright idea was it to include you into helping assemble the cradle? The poor kid doesn't have a chance sleeping in there."

She giggles, and they both glance over, happy to lighten her mood. They don't know that she's only laughing at the image of the Colonel being spray-tanned.

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The hum of the air conditioner is loud, seemingly roaring in the box of her room. She lies in bed, watching the ceiling as streams of shadows are chased away by outside cars.

When did she get so lonely?

* * *

The sum of all parts.

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TBC.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: And this is where I speed things along. With far less f-bombs, by the by.**

**Also... I know I know, everyone seems to hate babies, or at least babyfics. But it just sort of happened. Thanks so much to hopeisabluebird for the beta-ing and all the reassuring done :D.**

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So this is love.

* * *

She gives birth in time for the chickadees to sing that two-toned whistle.

* * *

Two days of labor, three hours of hoarse screaming, and a baby girl is born to her. Red skin, white-blond fuzz haloed over her downy head, blue eyes peeking from scrunched lids. A little girl who will never know her father and whose mother will most likely die in the line of duty.

Nine months and three hours of cursing this baby to hell and back and all it takes is one glance at the adorably wrinkled face for her hatred and fear to completely dissolve away.

She stares around the room in blubbering shock, sobbing as Janet laughs at her.

A glimpse of blue eyes proves to her that she is no child of the shadow man, a Goa'uld virus, or an absent-minded mathematics professor.

She belongs to Samantha Carter.

* * *

When she's finally able to receive visitors she stares accusingly at the Colonel.

"Why didn't you tell me it'd be this wonderful?"

His jaw drops in blatant incredulity, wry shock rather, thinking about that conversation in her lab so many months ago.

But his eyes glint knowingly, and he fails to hide a smirk as his hands curl into hers.

* * *

It's dark in the infirmary, and the hum of monitors breathes all around her. One single white artificial light lends a glaring wash to the infant, emblazing her tiny form and reflecting her still shadow in her plastic bed. Her mother curls on her side, blinking in awe and gently tangling her fingers in the soft, fine hair. She watches, through the indent of the pink blanket, as tiny ribs imitate lungs while they compress and relax, caving in at the centre of her chest.

She's never seen anything more beautiful in her life.

* * *

The first few nights they stay with her, camping out on her living room floor. By the fourth night she's pushing them out the door, ignoring their protests and smacking them with the baby bottle whenever one of them tries to resist.

At the entrance she lets them say their goodbyes to Kate, affectionately rolling her eyes as they coo over her as she's passed between them.

The Colonel carries her with an experienced ease, his large hands dwarfing the tiny body. He hasn't spoken too much since the birth, but when he looks up at and catches her watching him, the look in his eyes speaks volumes.

She looks away as the he reluctantly returns her child to her.

* * *

The shadows mean nothing to her anymore.

* * *

She has never seen so many damn diapers in her life.

* * *

She is so so tempted to tell her dad to fuck off.

_So_ tempted.

But the last time she did that she was 16 and was kicked out of the house for two weeks. And though she doubts her dad would do such a thing again in her own home, the man _does _have the entire Tok'ra database of knowledge in his head to exact some unimaginable punishment.

But does he always have to look so... _disapproving?_

The entire car ride is tense and quiet, and at the intersection she finally lifts her pointed glare from the steering wheel just in time to catch a glimpse of his knuckles whitening.

'Hey pops, glad to see you again. Guess what, I had a virus that made me uber horny and so I slept around while you were out saving the galaxy. Oh. And you're a grandpa again!'

Was a little bit of sympathy too much to ask for these days?

At her house he slams the car door shut, ignoring the visceral wince from the driver's seat. He stalks up to the entrance and impatiently waits for her, glowering at her from the stoop. From behind him the door swings open, revealing an intimidating Teal'c. The retired General transfers his glare to the alien, sidestepping past him into the warmth of the entryway. From the door they can see the kitchen, and in the kitchen they can see Daniel position the infant into her portable car seat.

Kate pins him with her wide blue eyes, transfixing him and stilling into place.

She walks up behind her dad, a slow smile stealing across her face.

She gives it twenty minutes before General '_Who's Ass Can I Kick Today' _Carter will begin sobbing like a schoolgirl.

* * *

She's sitting there in her sweats and a grimy dishtowel slung over her shoulder, watching as her daughter's face balloon into a red puff as the howls finally ascend into a silent pitch that only dogs can hear.

She's sitting there with tear streaks drying on her face and exhaustion exuding from her body. Wishing and craving for paperwork and doohickeys...

She's sitting there wondering, (seriously, she'll remember later, grimly) if it's too late for adoption.

She's sitting there closing her eyes and imagining herself to be a mindless replicator drone. Anything other what she is now.

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She wishes it were that easy to get back into the swing of things.

She's one part humbled and three parts irritated when half of SGC wish her luck, patting her on the back and giving her encouraging thumbs up.

It reminds her of when she was 19 years old, walking down a dorm hallway to the room of the resident Adonis, a guy named Jimmy something-or-other, trying to shy away from all the goading encouragements of the passing frat boys. The hall of shame, they called it. Her embarrassment outweighed by her desire to spend the night with an equally embarrassed Jimmy.

She shrugs if off, she's hardly the first Air Force Major to have had a baby. But she can't quite shake the irritation of having the "maternity leave" title tagged to her. She straightens her back as she walks past the fresh batch of new recruits who eye her with something less than respect, young kids who know her as the 'woman who went psycho and came back with a baby'.

She knows, mentally weary, that she has to prove herself all over again.

* * *

It's hard for her to leave Kate behind; but she knows that she's in good hands. She smiles softly as the far off sound of pots clatter on the kitchen tiles; it's a rare night to have the whole house to herself these days. The kid is going to grow up to be a spoiled princess, through no fault of her own. She kisses the top of Cassie's head as the teen stretches out on the couch, resting against her favorite aunt. From the living room she can see the Colonel dangle her daughter over one hip as the little girl clutches his grey shirt. Janet teases Teal'c as they walk past him, both offering gentle pats on her tow-colored hair. It's odd to see the hardened soldier look so at peace with life at that moment, as he makes funny faces at the girl. He glances up at that moment, catching her gaze from the couch. He purses his lips and spares a few more seconds jogging the child in his arms. But as much as he loves Kate, he can't forget her mother's rejection of him, and he reluctantly passes her over to Daniel, never taking too much time.

She looks away, her heart heavy.

She took this away from him.

* * *

Having a baby was so worth the look on McKay's face.

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She passes by the community hall, cocking her head into the buzzing of the tall floodlights that wash over the skating rink. She hikes the baby higher up on her hip, and the dark blue of the evening reminds her that Kate's bedtime is near. Her child, she thinks fondly, almost a year old, can be incredibly manipulative come bedtime. It's difficult, amidst tears and diapers and soggy cheerios and naptimes, to make a regular routine and remember to keep it up. She grimaces; all her years of military precision swiftly come undone by an infant. The mountain wind whistles through dead trees, and her strides slow, her thoughts churning.

No, that was wrong. Her military precision came undone with the ingestion of a Goa'uld virus, and has never quite recovered since.

The lights glare white onto the icy pavement where they pass, turning her walk into steps on a harshly lit theatre stage. But then trees intervene and the light swiftly dims down to a deep blue – like a thought, no, a feeling that passes so quickly she's not sure what it was – only left with the sense that it was good, but over before she can process it with her nitpicky mind. She tugs the child's woolen toque back down over her head, smiling brilliantly as chubby fingers attempt to repeat the same action to her mother. She nuzzles her cheek against the scratchy material, clutching her daughter through the plushy folds of winter jackets.

It's just her and Kate. Day after day after day, the world slips away and at the end of night, at the end of everything, it's just them.

She'll miss her. She knows Kate will be in the capable hands of Janet and Cassie, and that pricey daycare she keeps shelling money out for. A weeklong excursion to a known Naquadah-rich planet is almost seductive to her scientific mentality, but even that prospect can't tempt her away from this new life. The feeling gnaws at her stomach, but then she thinks about that feeling as they turned the corner, that brief knowledge of certainty. Everything she does, every bullet shot and every step taken, is for Kate. She knows, regretfully but affirmatively, that the fight against the Goa'uld is worth her time spent away. She smiles down at her daughter's milky grin, catching the drool as it slips down. They walk home, heavy boots crunching in the winter snow.

* * *

A bullet whizzes by her ear, practically deafening her. Definitely _not_ an alien weapon. She shakes away the ringing, looking around accusatorily.

"Who the hell gave Felger a gun?"

"Sorry sorry sorry sorry sor..." she silences him with a look.

A faint burning smell catches her attention, and she glances down at the ground where there's a clump of blonde singed hair lying at her feet. Another purple line streaks past her. Definitely an alien weapon.

"Fall back!"

She loads in another round and begins shooting, her nose crinkling at the coppery scent of blood and the distinct charring odor of burnt skin.

The Jaffa soldier is young, with pale blue eyes that stare her down. His kneecaps are broken, but she knows he's overheard their contingency plan from their makeshift camp, and she can't take the risk. So with a rigid hardness she's earned after six years, she fires a single bullet into his smooth forehead.

She walks away, regretfully, but assured in the knowledge that her daughter still has a mother.

She'll save the guilt until after her teammates are safe with their families.

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She feels the heat clamp down on her as her body ripples and shudders with another wave of... something. She had hoped, when she had stood idly by in the contraption as Niirti eyed her disdainfully from the controls, that the physical absence of an actual experiment would produce a different outcome then what the others had experienced.

But she knew better than anyone that the absences of corporeal objects don't necessarily equate to a happy ending.

The Colonel left a while ago, and there's no indication of his imminent return. The loneliness wracks through her body as sweat springs from her pores_. _Of all the ways she considered death knocking on the door, exploding into a pool of water ranked pretty low.

_Kate._

She coughs harshly, blinking the water from her eyelashes. A hand clasps over hers, stretching across from through the bars. Teal'c's dark eyes meet her cornflower blues, clinging to her like wheat dust.

He's worried; she's surprised to admit. Teal'c rarely shows any indication of deeper emotions, and even now his face is as taut as a string. But she knows him; she can see it clear as day. He's desperate.

"Major Carter." She twines her fingers through his, tenderly caressing his thumb. He pauses, regaining his control. Some men, she knows, need that physical reassurance from women, be it as lovers or as simple comforting gestures. She suspects Jaffa males are no different.

"Yes, Teal'c?" She encourages him, knowing what he is about to say.

"Major Carter. If you have any last words, I'd be honored to carry them with me."

She suppresses a grin, gazing at him fondly through dripping lashes, '_he sounds like a trial judge.'_

She realizes, though, that when she's finally forced into a cataclysm of shattering water, he'll be her last thought. And she feels truly blessed to have such a loyal friend. _My Redeemer._

She shakes her head, slowly and thoughtfully. "I have no regrets, Teal'c."

He nods, holding her hand right up until they hear the clattering of running footsteps.

Yea. He was always her favorite.

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His name is Luke, and she thinks he looks like that actor who played a Russian mobster, only without the Christopher Walken-type haircut. But his accent is New Jersey, and instead of vodka and money his passions are beer and hockey.

His humor is dry and sardonic, but there's a teasing warmth in his eyes that weakens her defenses. In the night at his apartment he laughs into her skin, and her eyes trace the freckles on his tanned shoulder.

He's simple, uncomplicated, and exactly what she needs right now.

But she's horrified when she first introduces him to Kate, who stares at him curiously as though trying to place him, before assuredly yells out, "Jack!"

She is so freaking glad she breaks it off before everyone realizes she is dating a replica of her CO.

* * *

Somewhere, buried under years of military protocol, is his name.

_Jack._

The word 'Sir' is so deeply entrenched in her mentality, so proscribed from the physiology of her vocals, that she surprises the both of them with the usage of his name.

Somewhere alongside the deep abyss where she holds the taboo of his name, floats the name 'Grace'. Brown eyes that mirror brown eyes.

She'll never tell him.

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The dust rises and chokes her as she sits weakly, resignedly watching as the super soldier emerges from his shroud of sand; her heart pounding as he turns her way.

Her leg burns and she can feel the grit of blood and sand line her face, and for the second time in her life she sees herself a failure.

A failure as a soldier, a mother, a scientist, and as a survivor.

She doesn't register the cacophony of bullets penetrate the stillness of this moment.

She just watches her defeated, slumped form in the reflection of black synthetic armor. Her eyes appear distorted in its spotless sheen, and she wonders for a moment if the fight is even worth it.

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Daniel stares seriously at Kate, willing her with his eyes to make the right decision.

"It's now or never Kate. The fate of the world rests on this. Trust me, 'red', is by far the superior color."

He receives a blank stare and a dribble of drool in reply. Her mother shoves him with an errant elbow. She clears her throat and looks pointedly at her child.

"Kate. I am your mother. You will listen to me and obey, or you won't be allowed to date until you're 18. So listen. You. Will. Choose. Blue."

"Red tastes like cherries."

"Blue looks like the ocean. Nemo lives in the Ocean, Kate."

"Red will make your hair smooth and silky." He ignores the weirded-out glance. "And blue just puts hair on your chest."

"Daniel, if my daughter wants hair on her chest, so be it. Kate, blue is pretty. Blue is the color of your pretty pretty eyes."

The Colonel looks down at them pityingly.

'"Corrupt her while she's young, heh?"

"Shut up Jack, I've almost got her."

"Sir, please."

He sighs, melodramatic at their pointed dismissal of him.

"Well, it's a shame that I've already beat you to the punch, then." He reaches behind him for a cup of orange Jell-O, waggling it in front of the toddler. She reaches for it, and he smiles triumphantly at his teammates shocked expressions. "Suckers."

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She watches as Kate toddles up the sidewalk, heaving herself over the first big step. She walks slowly behind her, arms folded and eyes catching everything but not comprehending anything. She can't smile, the heaviness in her heart attests to that. She knocks on the door,

When the Colonel answers the door, Kate raises her arms with her plastic magician's wand in one hand and yells "ta da"! She waits expectantly as he stares down at her in confusion, and her wide smile wobbles uncertainly.

This was a mistake.

For a moment she considers snatching up her child, running away from the disheveled man at the door and back to the car. She wonders if he'll chase after them, speaking in Ancient, or just follow their run with an amnesia-induced stare. She doesn't want her daughter's last memory of him to be that of a stranger.

But the moment her instincts begin to form the blank look in his eyes shutters itself away, and he picks the kid up and tosses her in the air.

Colonel O'Neill makes them spaghetti.

The surrealism of it makes her want to throw up.

He's due to die in hours, and instead he serves dinner, waving aside her horrified protests, a weary assurance in his tired eyes as he maneuvers around them in the kitchen.

Later the Colonel sprawls down on his living room floor bouncing her little girl on his knee as they watch the same Disney movie Kate has already watched a half a dozen times. Kate insists he learn the words to the song, and it isn't long before he's sheepishly mumbling alongside to 'R-E-S-C-U-E, Rescue Aid Society, heads held high, touch the sky, you mean everything to me...' They ignore the fear in his eyes, the constant worry that his words will shift to Ancient. She tries to lighten the mood.

She smiles teasingly at him from the door, 'You'll rue the day you let me hear that, Sir.'

But as the afternoon sun dies and spills across the floor and emblazons them in a bright light, her smile quavers, and that familiar feeling of longing and regret engulfs through her.

She loves him.

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Cassie calls her, over and over and over, expecting a comforting voice and an equal source of anger. General McDonald from Area 51 asks her for a detailed report on the ZPM from Antarctica. Doctor Lee has been waiting 15 hours for her approval on a high-velocity ammunition test through the heavy gravity field of planet P70-whatever. The newspaper hasn't been picked off of the drive and the mail juts out from the gateway.

Tomorrow, maybe.

She stares at the ceiling as Kate cries and cries and cries, her voice raspy and hoarse with the effort. She can't find the strength to go and comfort her.

Janet's gone.

The world and the people in it knock on her door, demanding and pleading and taking, always fucking taking.

Tomorrow, maybe.

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Sometimes it's hard for her to find her identity as something else than a mother.

But somewhere deep down, an embarrassing notion seeps into her conscious that this isn't necessarily bad.

For the first time in her life, as Kate wraps herself around her legs, it feels weird to finally understand that she is no longer that youthful golden girl with a chip on her shoulder sauntering in with the Pentagon at her heels. She is much closer to 40 then she's comfortable admitting, but she doesn't lament the starry-eyed girl left in her wake. She glances down at the kid, _her kid, _whose white-blond hair and blue eyes never changed from infancy, despite Janet's predictions.

She thinks, complacently, that this is a worthy tradeoff.

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She plasters C-4 into a jagged crack on the wall, motioning to Daniel to take cover behind the cluster of abandoned crates. An ebb of apprehension jogs at her brain, a minor worry about disappointing her CO. But as soon as she recognizes the trepidation she shoves it down. It's not her fault that they fell into the clutch-hold of Anubis' secret base. She's assured in the experienced knowledge that the C-4 will detonate exactly as planned, crevassing and splitting the wall as she had mentally designed. She knows with a sure certainty that they will survive this day.

It's only later, with the orange sun glaring at her from her rearview mirror, spilling over her tanned features as she heads home, that she realizes with the utmost confidence that she is a leader. Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter. Not once, _not a single time,_ during their entire escape did she hear the voice of General O'Neill guiding her through her plans; it was only her voice that steered the way.

She lowers her sunglasses over her squinting eyes and smiles at the long stretch of road ahead.

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On usual days he looks about as bored as anything from behind the desk, but she usually doesn't mind, guiltily accepting his attentions as a means for distraction.

But today he's tired, and old, and in two hours he's had to write three letters of condolences and two transfer referrals from nursing staff, all of whom were employed by SGC for ten years, who served and healed and fought alongside SG-1. Here, people either leave or die. This is a type of day she recognizes, and she knows by the expression on his face he is mourning the old days and the early camaraderie of the SGC. It's funny to think that a government institution saved his life, and it saddens her to think that the Air Force is all he has left anymore.

She joins him in his office later, tossing him a saran-wrapped turkey sandwich as she slouches down in the roll-chair. He inattentively places it to the side as he proof checks the standard-issue letter. She can tell something is off, and she clasps her fingers together and waits him out.

Eventually he sighs, running a hand through his grey and white hair.

"We don't talk about the actual stuff."

She shoves away the dread that he might actually be talking about 'them', but she knows he's smarter than that.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm saying Carter, we walk around saying things like the 'greater good' and the 'fight for freedom', but you don't talk about the people you lose along the way. You have a memorial for them, hand a flag to their loved ones, and move on. What the hell's the point?"

"You answered it yourself, Sir, the greater good." '_But that's not what you're talking about, is it?' _

Eventually, he glances over at a picture of Charlie wearing yellow rubber boots, for the first time with an expression entirely devoid of guilt. He speaks softly, absently as though he hadn't meant to speak aloud.

"Why do things have to change, Carter? Why can't things stay the same?" He looks warily over at the wall. "Why do people have to go?"

She sits back, considering his words. She thinks of Lieutenant Sommers and Nurse Cooney, who she knew for seven years and is sad and glad at the prospect of them moving on. She thinks of Charlie and Sara and Kowalsky. She thinks of Daniel and Janet and her mom and both Jonas' and the shadow man and her little girl. There was a time in her life where she was so absorbed by her work that the consequence proved to be the exclusion of everything and everyone else. And she knows now, after all these years, of life outside these barren walls. She looks at her tightly clasped fingers before fixing a reassuring gaze on his tired face.

"So that life is more important, Sir."

His eyes sharply turn to meet hers, and she smiles warmly at him, like a mother would a child, before calmly leaving her chair and exiting the room.

* * *

When she was 13 years old, she called her mother a bitch. Her mother dragged her out by the ear and slapped her hard across the face, clear in front of the neighbors. Three months later she was dead.

Today Samantha Carter turns the same age her mother was when she was called a bitch. She sits on the porch, drinking a celebratory birthday beer, the sun on her face, and hopes her mother knows she loves her.

* * *

Cassie has offered to babysit, and she can't be more grateful. She spares a wince at the memory of shoving the toddler into the arms of the young woman minutes before, offering a grateful grin and a quick slam of the door. She figures the apologies can come _after_ the first night she has had to herself in a... well in a long while.

Just one damn night. That's all she wants.

It's hotter than hell though. She drags the dusty fan onto the coffee table and directs the aim towards the couch, sighing with bliss at the sudden coolness. Her whole house hangs with a heated humidity, seeping into every pore and taking up residence in a simmering sort of pleasure.

She changes into shorts and a tank top and plops on the couch, her long legs dangling over the side of the armrest. An Irma Thomas LP drifts through the room, and she stretches her body out like a cat. Her feet slide together as she sips some wine, reading Scientific American, flexing her toes and relishing the coiling of muscles in her calves. Her limbs are hot and clammy, but her face is nice and numb as the circulated air of the fan rages in her face.

The doorbell rings, and she narrows her eyes at the intrusion, glaring at the door.

Fercryingoutloud, _one night! _

She makes a grab for her wineglass as she swings her legs off the armrest, cocking the glass back and emptying it in one swig.

She opens the door, harder than necessary, and stops. Jack O'Neill is standing on her stoop under the wash of the porch light, staring at her with an unutterable expression on his face.

She stills, knowing what's to come.

His eyes darken with something she never thought she would ever see again, and her face pales at the prospect.

She knows at this very second, that her life is going to change in inexplicable ways, and though she's terrified shitless, she finds herself in the unusual position of being more than willing to jump in after it.

He seems to takes a single stride forward, but she realizes belatedly he in fact hasn't moved an inch but for his leather-encased arm; his face indecipherable as a long tapered hand, driven by an invisible momentum, swings from his jeans. The calluses graze her jaw as his fingers glide through her hair to clasp the back of her neck, ignoring her shocked exclamation as he gently drags her forward and draws her into his simmering mouth. One fist remains nonchalantly jammed into his pocket as his body stands taut, patiently waiting for a reaction. Eventually, far too soon, he releases her. She leans back in shock, blue eyes wide and glazed in the aftermath.

He calculatingly watches the play of emotions on her face confidently, assuredly unafraid of her reaction.

She loves him. She doesn't need to be shown that. She understands that she'll follow him like a star is swallowed by a black hole, because to her that's what he represented for so many years. He's like a black hole, systematically weakening each defense to draw her in and break her like a supernova, creating the grace in her that only her love for him could have perfected.

She inhales shakily, nodding her head imperceptibly as she acknowledges this sudden shift in her life. 'Okay Jack.' She thinks, finally allowing his name a place in her mind.

She leans forward again, barely registering the look of immense relief collapse into his face as he springs forward and crushes her hot up against him, drawing each particle of her body into him as he drops kisses along her face, trailing down to her jawbone. She hears ragged, jerky words like "love" and "Kate" and "Cassie" and "fishing" and "resignation papers" and what sounds suspiciously like "making out in her vintage car" but she isn't really listening, too intent on pouring her entire body and soul into the magnetic draw of his raw energy.

Finally, she curls her head into the slant of his neck, emitting a weak groan as he traces lazy designs on her shoulder. The noise turns into a soft laugh, and she shyly glances up at him intent on sharing a teasing glance, but caught unawares at the sheer intensity of his face. This time she places a hand at the back of his head, and cautiously pulls him into her. He takes her acquiescence with a visible gladness and pushes her against the doorjamb, crushing away every minute space in between them. Her hands tug and clench at his leather jacket, the edge of his dog tags jabbing at her until finally bending with the combined forces. The rawness and raggedness of his kisses softens into something inexplicably gentler, and after seven years she finally turns the tables and grasps his hand and leads him inside.

* * *

So this is love.

* * *

Samantha Carter wakes up to a callous hand gripping her sharp hip. She blinks, sleepily understanding that sometime between answering the door and waking up the next morning she has made love to Jack O'Neill.

She smiles, and falls back asleep.

Again she wakes up, eventually, still sweaty and sticky and her face positioned in the hollow of his neck and the swell of his Adam's apple. She studies the long, tanned column of his throat, and wonders how it is she can be so turned on by a stretch of skin. His jaw is coarse and stubbly, and she feels the reflected burn on her cheek.

He's a steady lover, she grins in remembrance, and though she admires that about him, she impishly vows to one day break that militaristic control.

She slides a hand past his ribs over his collarbone and eventually resting to cup the angle of his jaw, a tactile reassurance that he's there, she's there, that they made it out of whatever bog they had muddled through for seven years to reach this culminating point.

It's only the musky scent of his skin on hers that reminds her that this, _this, _is real. This is right.

She'd seen his face in so many circumstances: stony and shuttered; grim and weary; bored and restless. But the times she thought she saw more, the few times she thought she could understand the infinitesimal darkening in his whisky eyes, she dismissed it as a passing figment.

As much as she knew him, he was a stranger to her.

She had always felt, for as long as she had known him, the inextricable, unexplainable need to decipher him. He was a man of secrets and codes and a veiled past that she wanted shared to her, a knowledge that she pitiably wanted to own. But it took her 7 years to realize that Jack O'Neill is just that. A man. A man with a tragic history that occasionally gives him the illusion of complexity. And it's only now she realizes that he is a simply a man who wants a woman, specifically her, and would even distance himself romantically if that meant he would have her by his side.

He stuck by her, despite her sleeping around and being psychotic and kicking him in the balls in the motel room and having another man's baby and even being romantically rejected by her for three years.

_Always._

But Jack O'Neill isn't as complex as she always perceived him to be, and she knows with the utmost certainty that _he will always be there. _

For years she wondered why it was that he shut her out. It was easy for him to take in Daniel and Teal'c into his confidence, but with her...

Simply put... there was a line.

And there came a point in her life where she was sick of being the one to put that foot on the line, without any indication that it was at all welcome. For years, _years,_ she thought she was tiptoeing that thin border all by herself. Sure. The Colonel was attracted to her. So were a lot of men. But watching marriage and children slip through her fingers over the years in the dim hope of a relationship that might never occur drained on her mentality in ways that exhausted her just thinking about it.

All those years banking on tomorrow.

She thinks of all those times where she came to his doorstep wearing her nice skirts and expensive makeup, building up the courage to tell him how she felt, and how he always subtly managed to side shift the conversation. The only times she ever truly knew otherwise was the za'tarc incident and the almost kiss during her pregnancy with Kate.

But somewhere, barely palpable, somewhere behind his reserves she remembers feeling the pulse of something deeper. And that was enough.

She can't quite thank him for pulling her from the brink of insanity. To do so would be devaluing her own strengths; it took a good few years to realize that she wasn't who she was today because of him. . Somewhere along the line she noticed she no longer felt obsolete, or expendable. She couldn't thank him, or Kate, for this feeling. She likes to think, as she tangles her fingers in his chest hair, that they helped each other grow.

A faint silver scar glints on his hairline, and she scrunches up her eyebrows in confusion at it. It's so demure and meek and _delicate _compared to the puckered, raw scars that line his body. She strokes it softly, smiling as she feels him shift to consciousness and blink sleepily towards her. He stills for a moment, confused, before releasing his face into a relaxation she has never before observed from him. He gently lets his fingertips brush soft-ghosted trails up her back, and she shivers in the morning dawn.

She used to be jealous of the alternate reality Dr. Carter, and her marriage to another Jack. But not anymore. Her path to her own Jack is perfect. It is real and it is calm. It is, and always was, inevitable.

He nuzzles his nose into her hair, and she felt his calm exhale cool her scalp. He shrugs her forward, catching her gaze. He smiles, his face lighted with dawning understanding.

'You were right, Carter." His eyes are dark, though open, absent of shadows and secrets. "Life is too important."

Within a year of knowing Jack she had understood, through the obstructionist years of her strict upbringing and militaristic training, that she was in danger of being wholly disassembled by him.

Her response is a low murmur and an imperceptible burrowing into his neck. She breathes in the tangy scents of sweat and laundry detergent ensconced in his skin, hardly believing she was here. His body is lean and taut against hers, and the tendons in his arms bulge as he clasps her to him.

"You know Carter, for a scientist you're kinda hot."

She raises an eyebrow.

"You're telling me this now?" She feels his grin widen on her skin.

"Well you know, didn't want to put you up on a high horse or anything. I mean, geez, you're already a genius. Save some hope for us mortals, alright?"

She lightly smacks him. "But Jack," His teeth grazes her skin harder at the murmur of his name, "You already have bragging rights."

He lets out a low bark of surprised laughter. "Such a modest woman..." his murmurs trail off into the sweep of her neck.

For years she contained the guilty seed of hope, that maybe one day he'd notice, that one day he'd care to find out. She realizes now, why he distanced himself away for those three extra years. Because he trusted her more than she ever trusted herself. And he knew that she had to find her own way to him.

Because Jack O'Neill is just a man. Who's just not that complex. And he knows what he wants.

She blushes as she walks to the bathroom, moments after wiggling into her panties and tossing on a camisole. Absolutely floored. Jonathan "Jack" O'Neill, with two LLs, just smacked her ass.

Yea.

She could get used to this.

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**SJSJSJSJSJS**

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On the walk home from preschool her daughter finds a chunk of dirty ice, shiny black, that she takes a liking too. She cradles it in the scratchy fibers of her mittens as she carefully darts over the brown snow bank that lines the sidewalk.

Kate calls out to Jack, whose lanky figure lazily rests by the mailbox as he waits for them. She reverently passes the ice block to him and demands respect for the new friend she has officially given the moniker of 'Icey'. He crouches down with popping knees, nodding seriously, and Sam rolls her eyes, just _knowing_ it'll end up in the freezer.

He waits for Sam at the gate as Kate runs ahead, dragging her close and wrapping his arm around her. She rests her head into the strong, taut cords of his neck, smiling at the sudden rough swallow. He pulls her closer into his lean body, careful of her swollen womb, shielding her from the invisible ice driven by a biting mountain wind.

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**SJSJSJSJSJS**

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If she knew a virus could bring her to this, she would have traveled to that desert planet years ago.

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**The End. **


End file.
